


Blood Void

by skydork (klismaphilia)



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Victorian, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Anal Sex, Attempted Murder, Blood and Gore, Bloodplay, Bondage and Discipline, Cannibalism, Corsetry, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Domestic Violence, Dominant Armitage Hux, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Forced Feminization, Forced Marriage, Gold Digger/Black Widow Hux, Graphic Description of Corpses, Hand Jobs, M/M, Major Character Injury, Manipulative Relationship, Multi, Murder Husbands, Murder Kink, Necrophilia, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Past Child Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Period-Typical Homophobia, Power Play, Rimming, Rough Sex, Serial Killer Kylo Ren, Threats of Violence, Verbal Humiliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-11
Updated: 2017-04-01
Packaged: 2018-09-17 00:12:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9295766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/klismaphilia/pseuds/skydork
Summary: Many would look at the black-veiled Armitage Hux and see nothing more than a grieving widower; but, as one young man knows, Armitage is far more sinister than his brittle limbs and teary eyes would make him out to be.The pseudo-philosopher Ben Solo, son of infamous noblewoman Leia Organa, is just as depraved. A man who roams the streets late at night, questing to find the meaning of life through blood, is a threat that would seem unrivaled by most, if not all.When two bloodstained paths cross, the result is infinitely chaotic.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [missabigailhobbs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/missabigailhobbs/gifts).



> YEP BACK AT IT AGAIN WITH THE VICTORIAN AUS
> 
> so missabigailhobbs and I have been talking about this idea for like... the past two weeks. and I finally wrote it, even though I have two other WIPS that need finishing and I AM AWFUL but I did this anyway.
> 
> on that note, please read the tags to make sure you don't get squicked. :)  
> and also, I would add that this fic is very centric to a male character wearing dresses (all for plot purposes, as should be fairly obvious from the first section) but if that's not your thing, i'd suggest looking for a different fic. this is in no way meant to diminish the fact he is male. it is purely plot-centric.
> 
> *NOTE TO STORMPILOT SHIPPERS: five&epilogue are incredibly stormpilot focused, hence why I tagged it. however, if you still want me to remove it from the tag, that is fine.

**Blood Void**

**...**

 

**First--**

 

Ever since Armitage could remember he’d been little more than a trophy.

His first years were spent collecting dust, for lack of a more fruitful term; Armitage’s father was a severe man who carried himself with a callousness commonly seen in gentry. Brendol was not gentry, of course-- he was a shunned man, disgraced from his own unsightly methods during his military years. And if that had not been enough to doom him, the manner in which he’d demeaned himself with a kitchen woman during his middle years certainly was. It seemed fair to acknowledge that Brendol Hux had never intended for a child to result from their uncouth coupling. Nonetheless, he had been saddled with Armitage; a weak, sickly child with hair as red as blood and eyes glinting with a malice far beyond his years.

Lady Hux, as Armitage had been made to address her, saw him for what he was the first time she’d laid eyes upon him. _A wicked child, born of sin,_ she would remark to Brendol, refusing to so much as bestow a gaze upon the poor, degenerate _bastard._ And Armitage had always known there was a wickedness to him, had envisioned it so clearly, belying each movement, the shadow of his waifish figure cast over a bricked alley or a candlelit wall. Perhaps Maratelle had been useful for something after all, in judging what Brendol apparently could not.

Brendol was a simpleton, for all his experience amongst authoritarian men; so quick to marry off the loathsome whelp he’d barely desired to name, giving him to a man with no practical experience in the realm of society other than nepotism. And perhaps it was nepotism, in the end, which had allowed Armitage to be gifted this marriage of circumstance. Brendol Hux wanted glory, he wanted _status,_ the status which had been ripped from him, in his opinion, unfairly. Every move he made was for the sake of saving face, the reputation of which the Hux family had once held on high.

Armitage had no admiration for his father’s hubris; it was as asinine a quality as his own supposed _ignorance._ His uneducated mind was supposedly incapable of comprehending mathematics or linguistics; _the best we could expect of you is philosophy,_ Brendol had huffed, a true insult in its own right. Brendol was always quick to point out the negative traits of philosophers, their _impractical theory, failed-logic, inability to scrounge a leg to stand on._ But it was well known that Armitage was useless.

And uselessness, as all else, was not up for debate. Especially not for a _weak-willed bastard,_ whose place was to remain at the side of others. _Bite your tongue, Armitage. Smile if you must. Society does not care for your opinion, nor do I._

Minding that, his husband had enjoyed his ignorance in their first few months. _Endearing,_ he would say. _My endearing lark, Armitage._ As though he were nothing more than a pet to be kept for entertainment, an _object_ to represent how well-off the man was.

The Tarkin name was quite renowned already, and fortunate. As a relation to the esteemed Wilhuff Tarkin (cousin, Clarence would always say, and then as an after-thought, _twice-removed_ ), Clarence was from old money, a quality so sought after in society that Brendol had offered Armitage’s hand at the simple promise for connection. It was a wise decision, Armitage had been made to admit, and he had _meant it,_ though that was a rather unfortunate thing in and of itself.

His father seemed to have no care for Armitage’s condition; _you are slight enough that it wouldn’t hurt you to wear a dress, boy,_ were the last words to fall from the insatiate ruffian’s mouth when he’d handed Armitage off. _It would suit Lord Tarkin’s preference to have you, but you should take care to hide your proclivities. Homosexuality is depraved, but I should be glad to have you off my hands, at long last._

This sentiment was mutual, needless to say, and Armitage had told Brendol as much, laughing in his face and _spitting,_ the wickedness drawing an aura of darkness over his being. He had sounded decidedly _sycophantic,_ a haughty tone of menace lacing each of his words, the smile on his face _venomous._

“My foolish father,” Armitage had hissed, all glinting-eyes and lascivious features. “You would do well to remember that your _place_ in society is hardly above mine. In theory, I daresay _I_ should be the pleased one. A splendid fate it is, away from the taint of your vainglory. May you roll in your grave when I return to piss on it.”

 

* * *

 

 

The high-collared white dress that Armitage had worn during his wedding had tucked into a corset ringed in blue and silver. It hugged his reedy figure in a manner that accentuated only Armitage’s desirable assets; a slim waist and tall stature, now as regal as it had once been haphazard. His red hair was long enough to be pulled into a high knot on his head, drawn back to expose high cheekbones and the snobbish grimace that he found most befitting of his new position. He was made to shave regularly, caking his face with white powders that should shield his masculinity, were he to attend any formal events.

It wasn’t as though he attended many. Befitting of their hastily-organized marriage, Clarence acknowledged Armitage as he might a child. It was clear that he thought his new partner to have no more intelligence than one, nor understanding. Armitage was to keep out of business affairs and his political involvement; _don’t worry your pretty little head over such things, Tidge. Look after the house and the cleaning, entertain my friends. That seems far more to your tastes than bartering with financiers._

The dismissal of his ideas was an endlessly frustrating habit of his husband’s.

The few fineries he’d been privy to were amongst the Tarkins’ seemingly endless array of business partners. Heavyset men with overtly ridiculous expressions who seemed too keen on speaking about their inane propositions; the company Brendol had always sought and yet never held. Armitage minded himself, the reminder of _hold your tongue, smile at them, hold your tongue_ replaying in his mind until it became a mantra. If the occasion called for it, he might be asked to dance, and he was expected to take up the task with fervor.

He made an acquaintance.

The boy’s name was Dopheld-- _boy,_ Armitage had settled on, because he was surely no older than twenty-five. A young man with apparent aspiration, but a mouse-like demeanor; quiet, soft-spoken and _gentle._ Gentle in a way that was unbefitting of those in business. He’d held onto Armitage’s waist with reverence, a hand braced on the slight of his back and asking for permission whenever he so much as shifted.

The whole encounter was horribly _sweet._ Sweet, and redundant, after all.

Soon after, Armitage had begun his dismissal of Clarence Tarkin; the man seemed plenty giddy to diminish their relationship to a sexual one, something of intimacy and _lust,_ pinning Armitage against the fine linens of their bed and kissing him breathless, hiking up his long limbs while he stretched out the younger’s tight hole with one, then two, then three fingers. Their exploits were usually quick, with Tarkin taking him from behind and filling his body with hot semen, leaning over him to nip at his neck , trail down his shoulder until he collapsed breathlessly atop him. On the offchance that he was feeling _particularly_ adventurous, he might spend longer inside Armitage, or curl up behind him with his hand lazily tracing the swell of his ass and dipping along the stretched rim.

It was demeaning, in a sense, for Armitage to roll over and _accept_ the devious act of penetration. He couldn’t protest that he had come to find pleasure in the act, over time, edging himself toward whatever release he was allowed to garner during sex, but he was certain he would not have accepted this place so easily were it not expected of him.

Though Armitage was more than pleased to fuck the man if it kept their talking to a minimum. The wretched pet names that his husband bestowed him were so demeaning that he’d begun to grow angry when they were forced to hold conversation. Calling Armitage _idle,_ a _spendthrift, dependent--_

It would be so satisfying to throw those words back in his face.

Although, Armitage considered: what would be the point? If his partner could not be bothered to indulge him, to _acknowledge_ him, what reason had he to give even an _insult_ in return?

Instead of inquiring after Tarkin, Armitage had enthralled himself in literature. He was not well-read, and nor was it a simple task to make sense of the lengthy words, so calling upon his husband’s _colleagues_ to lend him voice for passages was a logical move. Most were rather leery, and buffoonish, but they seemed reasonable enough to mind their manners-- though Armitage would admit to having engaged in the occasional touch.

A hand on his thigh, perhaps, or an arm slung about his waist, supporting his slender frame and taking note of his questions with a laugh or a smirk. Asking after his well-being, after his _relationship,_ as though they cared when it was so obvious they thought of him as a plaything in the manner Brendol once had. The only exception to be spoken of was Dopheld-- Dopheld, who was surprisingly _innocent_ considering his circumstance, who came from a family of decent wealth and reputation.

“Call me Hux,” he’d eventually requested of the young man, and Dopheld had taken to it eagerly.

Dopheld enjoyed passionate tales, things of romance and fantasy that Hux had never particularly found to his taste. But there was such a guileless aura to the boy that Hux allowed him to indulge, to read without fear of judgment or bitter critique as he would offer to the others. Rodinon was particularly niche in his interests, and the impracticality of what he would bring to read was laughable.

No, with Dopheld, Armitage allowed himself to indulge.

And moreso, he allowed the boy to _touch,_ more than he might another being. Mitaka never seemed offput by the knowledge that, beneath the lace and corsetry, Hux was of the same sex. If anything, he seemed fascinated, asking why Hux would allow his husband to treat him as he might a woman, why he would be alright with people deeming him _a foolish lark_ or a toy.

“It’s not all terrible,” Hux stated, once. “I’ve met you, haven’t I?”

Though it was that very thing in which lay the problem. He was married, already, a claim stuck to him and sewn over his own autonomy, _possessive._ It was akin to a mark of ownership; unyielding, revolting.

And in the knowledge of this face, Hux came to comprehend another matter: he needed to rid himself of Tarkin if he were to enjoy Dopheld’s company to the fullest. Hux may have been many things, but he was not a _strumpet._ He would not degrade himself to a position of _worthlessness_ when a clear solution seemed to be dangled before him like a gift.

And the solution was very beneficial.

If Tarkin died, sans an heir, then Armitage would receive his money. Not his property, of course, but the wealth would be more than enough to allow him a capability for travel, for _living._ If Tarkin died, then Armitage would no longer have to worry about his presence, about helping to sate his ever-pressing needs without gaining anything in return, of being _trapped_ in a life devoid of true passion.

So, to sum up what his thoughts had been implicit in teasing since Brendol had first revoked claim of him, Hux decided: Tarkin had to die.

Only then would he know _passion._

Only then would he know power.

 

* * *

 

 

Armitage cried when it happened, forcing the little crystalline drops of _melancholia_ to well in the corners of his eyes, the very picture of what he supposed a _distraught wife_ might be. His hands had been shaking, when he’d _so desperately_ latched onto the officer’s arm the night of Tarkin’s death, a quivering, clinging mess, too broken down to even string together a coherent sentence. He flashed an emotive gaze at the man, bit his lower lip with all the _insecurity_ of a widow, made sure to ask, carefully, _what am I to do? Who am I to go to, if I no longer have a husband?_

The servants who had heard the first echo of Hux’s scream were clearly shaken at the sight of a pallid, immobile corpse, stuffed tight in his bed and still half tangled around the red-haired creature he’d married. Armitage had not had enough heart to display sadness then, nor to appear so shaken by what most would consider a traumatic event. He concluded it was likely an acquired affect, the expressive volatility of mankind made for only a common human-- one who felt privy to normal emotions.

Hux had returned to the mansion alone, tucking his ankle-length black coat further around his brittle limbs with a scowl, wishing desperately that he had planned further ahead in the timeline post-death. It was hardly a difficult task to lace Tarkin’s liquor with arsenic, to coax him into drinking it all with the promise of sex, then lay him to bed for an eternal slumber. In truth, Hux’s only concern had lain in the eyes of a dark-skinned housekeeper, a young, pretty thing whose lip curled at the very sight of Hux with an unspoken _knowledge._ The boy was surely far younger than Hux, considering the widower had not seen him wandering the home in the past seven years of his entrapment. Not that it was a concern at all-- Finn was as illiterate as he was, himself, but with none of the wit to back up his incomprehension. What harm would a dim-witted child do, even if allowed a voice?

Hux called him up nonetheless, not bothering to take on the pretense of _grieving lover._ He ushered Finn into his quarters with a menacing grin, a slim-fingered hand lingering for a moment too long on the boy’s shoulder as he turned to the wardrobe.

The ring Tarkin had graced him with on announcement of their engagement was notably absent.

“Help me dress, _dear boy,”_ Hux called, the primal lure of a predator lingering in each action he took. And Finn had obeyed, undertaking the task of lacing Hux’s corset-- _tighter, I need to seem weak--_ and redoing the buttons of a high-collar, thin waves of black lace flattering Hux’s porcelain flesh in a most ethereal way. The fabric clung to his skin, a second skin for Hux to wear as a defense, his eyelashes fluttering once the last hook had been clasped around his throat. Finn offered praise when requested, though Hux couldn’t say whether it was purely out of fear or if the boy had found another motivation.

It seemed rather evident that Finn thought him cold-blooded, a _murderer_ in every sense of the word.

Hux allowed Finn to settle the sheer veil over his face, a dust of pitch dots covering his ginger hair, his expressionless glare, and when the servant had secured it with a silver ringlet settled over his head, Hux had _laughed,_ much in the same way he had upon Brendol’s dismissal of him. It was feral, instinctual, and so _nefarious_ that it might have caused a lesser man to soil himself. But Finn hadn’t; he’d shook his head, kept his eyes trained on the floor until Hux had taken the care to slip fingers beneath his chin and tilt his head high. His own eyes, green-blue like the depths of a tumultuous sea, were devoid of the typical cues matching sanity. Instead, Hux appeared to feel _nothing--_ apathy, at its finest.

“You’re a wicked man, Hux,” Finn had said to him, and Hux only grinned, leaning down to capture his lips in a kiss that burned with the sordidness of _death._

_“I know.”_


	2. Chapter 2

**\-- second**

 

 

If there had been a word to describe Finn, the clear choice would be  _ ill-fated.  _ At only twenty years, the boy had seen more than enough of heinous acts, of mankind’s darkest tribulations, than anyone should ever be made privy to. Were it not his duty to serve, to submit himself to scrutiny in the half-life of indentured servitude, Finn would have seen to his own departure before the madness had time to take hold.

The revelation had come too late, as expected. Finn could count the times he'd been provided a basin of water to clean Lord Organa’s knives of blood, purge the stains of Ben’s inner monstrosity. He hadn't dared to speak then; the head servant, Phasma, was a prickly woman who would surely lash him for talking out of turn, but Ben had been worse. His temper had seen the destruction of many a mirror, a desk, a chair-- a person. 

Ben Organa had been unseemly to begin with, but his madness had grown tenfold after returning from the East. Leia had taken to looking after him as one would expect of a mother, making sure to have the maids bring him timely meals, trimming up his tangled mess of black hair and tucking him back under the covers when he awoke, screaming from a dream-terror.

But Finn had seen what Leia had refused to; he had seen Ben wrap his hand around his closest companion’s neck, had watched him lash out with a steady crack of his palm, had observed him as he painted bloody trails over the inside of his own arm. The instability was frightening, and Rey had been more than ready to acknowledge that as well, unnerved by Ben’s abrasive behavior, his choleric temperament.  It had drawn her away from him, and his advances, the predatory remarks that had seemed only befitting of someone  _ mad  _ beyond all reason.

And, certainly, Ben was beyond reason.

Finn knew, in ways no  _ child  _ would have desired to know. He knew with the terror in Rey’s eyes, the imprint of fingers drawn about her wrist, a tremor in her step whenever she was faced with him, the man who  _ pursued  _ her, who  _ corrupted  _ all which fell in his path.  _ He is vile, Finn,  _ she told him,  _ a monster. But he's scared too. I can feel it, I can-- _

Well, Finn considered, tucking in the final edge of Armitage’s black slip, the final string of an elegant and high-waisted corset settling into place with dark ribbon.  _ It never mattered, anyhow. She was taken from me regardless. _

It had begun with the flower petals, red slips picked thin from a carnation and pressed into the pocket of Rey’s apron when she awoke. They were ghastly things, she'd remarked, almost taunting her-- the papers with abhorrent words scrawled across them in cursive had only been worse, putting a  _ voice  _ to something she had feared all along.

_ Whore,  _ they said,  _ filthy scavenger. You think yourself too good for me. You're nothing. You understand nothing. You need a lesson, girl. Something befitting of your ignorance. _

_ Pain. Pain is the strongest testament to human failure. How pretty your blood is, girl, red on black on white, rivers singing to me from your soul. Life's blood, life's venom-- I would have yours, I would.  _

And he had. He had, he'd split her open, one arm around her delicate waist as the brittle end of a dagger protruded from Rey’s ribcage. She'd been so stunned, so  _ breathless,  _ clung to him and spilling crimson down the Lord’s front, her tiny fingers tensed in a hold on the counter behind her, useless.

She'd whispered Finn’s name, soft and quiet, airy like an angel. It was his sole focus, the light hidden between her gentle words, as the dagger was accursedly plucked free and slid back between her limbs like butter. 

Finn hadn't screamed. He wouldn't dare, wouldn't risk everything he'd so long sought, not if it meant divesting himself of security, losing  _ everything  _ and not just Rey. Instead, he had quivered, curling in in himself as his hands faltered and bunched in his own loose robes. Tears began to prickle the inside of his eyelids, tightly shuttered while he wept _. _

And from there, he'd lost himself.

And now, here he was. The indentured servant Finn, created anew yet with such a similar circumstance that it would be foolhardy  _ not  _ to deem him ill-fated. Ill-fated and ill-favored and  _ wounded,  _ grievously.

“You're such a  _ lovely  _ boy,” Armitage cooed, his fingers like needles that grazed the edge of Finn’s jaw, nails etching a trail over stubble not days old with his bemused smirk, vitriol  _ oozing  _ from between the seams of his prettiness. “Veil, Finn.” 

And the boy complied, hastily pinning the silver-sheen fabric in between the locks of Hux’s elaborate up-do. This lace, fine and sheer, glowed like moonlight, bathing the man’s white-washed cheeks in an array of stars, adorning him as though he were a being of splendeur, not merely a disillusioned bastard.

It seemed, then, as though Hux could read his mind. A white-gloved arm backhanded the younger across the face, not bothering to hold in the force of his  _ wickedness. _ Prim lips took on a grimace, disgusted.

“You would do well not to even  _ think  _ of crossing me.”

The servant flinched, even in spite of his better instincts urging him to calm, stay rigid and apathetic of Hux’s spite. Finn was not intimidated by Tarkin’s so-called  _ wife _ , not as he should have been; even as bitter as he appeared, and so quick to snap out retorts, to punish with a domineering hand as his husband so often sought to do, Hux was weak. Weak in that he, himself, hardly seemed capable of understanding his own desires. Weak, in that he could feign emotion but never conjure it, only a short-lived glee or misery that seemed to throw him into a haze of delusion once more.

“Were you to go to town this morning, Armitage?”

“It depends on whether anyone is willing to accompany me,” his hand slid over the curve of Finn’s broad shoulder, pinching the cloth of his shirt between a pointer finger and thumb, then biting his lip. “Would you enjoy that, Finn? Leaving the manor, laying eyes on people besides me and your servant friends? I know I have a penchant for enmity, but it’s not all bad, is it?”

“Not in a traditional sense, ma’am.” 

“How  _ funny,”  _ the other continued, and Finn’s eyes widened once Hux took hold of his chin yet again, his mouth so near to the younger’s eyes that the heat of his breath was making the lashes flick. “I’ve never met someone as brazen as you, Finn. You’re very  _ interesting. _ If I weren’t already spoken for, I might have taken you to bed.”

* * *

 

 

All that Finn’s presence affirmed was Hux’s righteousness in killing Tarkin. The man had been so absorbed with himself it was practically egomaniacal; not only was he better off  _ unbound  _ like this, but so, it appeared, was everyone else. And perhaps Hux had, in truth, taken a liking to this mild-mannered boy, this  _ worthless  _ servant who did not hold his tongue, who saw Hux for what he truly was.

_ Diseased.  _ Overcome by his own wickedness.

How trite it was, really. Was Hux truly wicked for desiring his own  _ self-value?  _ Philosophers might make a point of disagreeing, but Hux had never been keen on philosophy, not even in Brendol’s taunts.

It was obvious that Armitage Hux was made for so much  _ more  _ than being a pretty bedwarmer.

He’d taken Finn into market that day in the hopes that the boy might find it fit to open up; there were few things that intrigued Armitage as much as this  _ pretty servant,  _ with his jaded words but eyes of  _ softness,  _ an old soul inhabiting a young body. Governed by  _ hope,  _ it would appear, and as utterly  _ puerile  _ an ideology as it was, the concept seemed oddly… beloved.

Hux rolled a string of beads between his bony fingers, nails napping against the curve of a wooden circle as he looked to Finn once more. From the corner of his eye, it was easier to judge the boy’s character… a bit tumultuous,  _ a wounded bird,  _ his eyes glancing across a slip of paper sat in the newsstand with--

_ I thought he was unable to read. Is the child literate after all? How begrieved am I, that my father denied me even a basis for knowledge? _

Finn’s mouth curved into a slight frown, Hux’s hand curling around his wrist. It was hardly a passing minute as the redhead’s own grip trailed lower, his fingers lacing tightly around the dark-skinned boy’s own, only for Finn to jolt and yank himself away, as though burned.

“Did I startle you?” Hux questioned, his voice a mask of pretend-ignorance. “Did you wish to have a paper, Finn? I’m certain I have the money…”  _ Now that my witless husband is gone,  _ went unspoken, though Finn’s brow furrowed as though picking up on the unsaid words between the lines. 

“The picture-- she reminded me of… of someone I cared for.”

_ Cared for.  _ What an absurd notion. Hux smiled, poison dripping from his lips. “Would you like to talk about her?”

“No.” Finn snapped, roughly, and then his eyes widened, as if realizing his error. “I’m sorry, s- ma’am. But I can’t speak of her.” The vivid image of long, tangled curls and enamored eyes both empathetic and sympathetic called to him; instead, Finn ducked his head, pushed Rey from his mind once and for all. “A friend. She was a-- my friend.”

* * *

 

 

“I was not so unlike you, once,” Hux tells Finn as the servant purses his lips, a tight line across his face that seems inelegant even for a servant. He's let the boy brush his hair, a tangled mess of red that falls in ringlets down his back, loose from the usual courtly updo. Finn’s hand does not shake when touching him, and for that, Hux almost manages to conjure some sense of admiration. 

Fortitude was a quality of the highest caliber, as Brendol would affirm.

“How so, sir?” Finn’s voice had dropped, a tone between meek and frustrated, yet the need to convey his passions was clear; he so hated Armitage, perhaps as much as he’d hated Tarkin. And what a wonderful thing it was, to feel hatred! Hux would have humored him, were it a different time, a different place. 

“Well, Finn, you see how I am now? It was  _ charity  _ to bring me this far, or rather what my father constituted as charitable. My tribulation came in my bastard childhood, my fair appearance-- did you know the whore who called herself my mother thought me a  _ witch? _ ” Hux smiled, then, his fingers dancing over the servant’s cheek. “Maratelle always did fancy a sense of humor.”

Stretching out, languid and shameless, Hux brings his head to rest along the taut skin of Finn’s abdomen. His lips grace the inside of the boy's thigh, an afterthought, offering appreciation in the most primitive of manners. Finn is abnormally still, statuesque in his position, shaking his head only when Armitage manages to nip at the thin cloth shrouding his lovely chocolate-skin.

“Finn,” Hux begins, soft but not innocent, disturbingly lascivious. “Tell me a story, will you?”

“I-I am unable to read, Armitage.”

“Literacy is unnecessary for storytelling,” Hux reminds him, his thoughts settled on a singular frame of paper, a black-and-white sketch of a girl still far in her youth, eyes like jewels set tight in her skull. “The girl,” he continues, brazen. “She was quite pretty, I suppose, to draw attention from you. Did you sit with her as I sit with you, Finn?”

“No. Not like this.”

“Shame.” Hux flicks his tongue over his lips, pausing. “I never sat with Tarkin, either. I suppose he thought himself too good for such a position. But you and I, Finn, we're of the same material. Poverty, anguish… the undesirables, as it were. You, for your skin and your orphanhood, me as a red-haired bastard.” 

“Honest, sir? I was never meant for a place in society. But I can love.” 

“And I am unable?”

“Incapable,” Finn acknowledges. “You don't understand the basis of love.”

Hux laughs, wild and hardly coherent. “Yes, of course, dear! How uncouth you are. A better mistress would punish you, but I see it as an asset. You may still have a chance.” He hummed, those blue eyes dancing with mirth as they caught Finn’s surprised gaze. “I would allow you a chance, you understand.”

Finn swallowed. “I’m not certain I do.”

_ “Well,  _ aren’t you just the picture of insecurity?” There held a pause, menacing. “Entertain me, Finn.”

* * *

 

It was only once winter had passed and the Manor was growing to a state of restlessness again that Mitaka began frequenting the home. Not to say any of the servants had been particularly surprise; Armitage had always been borderline-obsessed with the younger man’s company, pressing his hands all over the demure banker’s small form and calling him to his room under the pretense of having the boy read him  _ stories  _ even when Tarkin had lived. Finn heard gossip-- some envious, some  _ appalled  _ at the behaviors of  _ Mistress Tarkin  _ and his whorish manner.

It all seemed quite the scandal, and to nobody more than Hux, who reveled in the  _ attention  _ such a reputation seemed to have given him. He called upon Finn less regularly than before, but their meetings were always drawn out and ripe with conversation, a bitter tongue poking fun at the servant in a manner befitting of siblings.

Finn disliked that he was beginning to see a more  _ human  _ side to Armitage. Not only for their common backgrounds, their  _ suffering,  _ but for the fact that, given a chance, Hux would be more than amenable if he had to stick a knife in Finn’s back. Certainly he wouldn’t waste time with Mitaka, either, no matter how  _ precious  _ he claimed the young man was.

He’d said as much, after all.

“I like practical things, Finn. Practical things and practical people… those who are  _ useful  _ to me. But what happens when someone has outlived their purpose? Well.” He’d chuckled, the blunt end of a cigarra pressed into the ashtray beside his bed. “I think you are aware.”

Finn couldn’t claim a sympathy for Tarkin; the man had been downright  _ rude  _ in light of his circumstances. Though, if what Hux had said was true, that was expected of the nobility… the upper-class,  _ bourgeois imbeciles,  _ as he’d called them. The thought, however, of being able to carelessly discard other  _ humans  _ at any time that was so desired, was  _ disturbing.  _

Yet again, Finn thought of Hux’s dainty hands, the hands of an aristocrat, overlaid in the slippery iron of blood, a knife in grasp.  _ Ben,  _ who had always appeared to have thought the same,  _ Ben,  _ who was psychotic as he was handsome.

“So… hypothetically,” Finn had begun, and Hux had  _ grinned,  _ the cheshire smile of a pleased cat. “If there was someone who deigned to show you  _ affection,  _ yet they weren’t of use to you, what would you then do?”

“Is that an  _ offer?”  _ The ginger questioned, folding arms in his lap, prim. “Oh,  _ Finn.  _ You’re far too interesting to be my sacrificial lamb. All those secluded thoughts, rattling about inside that pretty head of yours… you are almost a  _ mystery.  _ And I do so  _ enjoy _ solving riddles. Although perhaps you are not as inconspicuous as you would first appear…”

Then, arms raising, Armitage had walked his hand over Finn’s chilled flesh, swept the edge of white fabric away from his throat to draw his palm over a shoulder wider than his own. Like the rest of him, his hands were bony, frail, nails like pinpricks once they’d nipped at Finn’s skin, the older man settled back on his mattress with his chin raised and eyes carefully watching. A pink tongue swiped across the edge of Hux’s mouth, his white dressing gown rumpled over his chest, heaving as though he were suddenly unable to get enough air.

The red flush high on his cheeks was enough to draw Finn’s blood cold. Armitage was  _ aroused,  _ longing, and his gaze read of pure  _ sin,  _ in the most detrimental of ways.

“I… I  _ cannot. Will not _ …” Finn grasped for words, pressing a hand against the visible protrusion of Hux’s collar, urging the man away from him. Hux had already parted his legs from each other, almost expectant, but at Finn’s unsteady speech, he offered a mere quirk of the head, a raised brow.

“So you  _ did  _ have a lover.” He said it in a manner of introspection, as though filing the information away for future consumption. “Was it her, Finn? The girl, the one you met so long ago… serving House Organa?” The ginger brushed a hand through his smooth hair, once again stoic, filtered. “Leia Organa has extended an invitation to Dopheld, you realize.”

“Why?” Finn’s voice cracked, the echo of it a gasp. 

“Who  _ cares?  _ I certainly don’t. She’s a misguided, petty woman! But if I’ve come to understand, she has a son…” Armitage licked his lips, once more, rolling onto one side with his arm stretched over a pillow, crooning. “A  _ son,  _ with interesting pastimes, who seems rather estranged. Living under her roof but hardly ever there… on the streets, perhaps?”

_ He knew.  _ The clarity of a man trying to gain information was not unfamiliar to Finn, even if he hadn’t known any to go about it quite in the same way as the wicked redhead to whom he played caretaker. “Please,” Finn begins, begging for something far beyond his control.  _ “Please,  _ Armitage.”

“What would you do in exchange for my discretion?” Hux questioned, as frivolously as he might ask to have his corset laced.

“I would…” Finn mulled over Ben; mulled over  _ Rey,  _ her agony, her sorrow, the neverending force of her screams still pounding against the inside of his skull. His head was throbbing, almost hazy with a fog of uncertainty and a need to  _ scream,  _ to cry, to tear himself away from it all. This reality--  _ Ben, Rey, Poe, Leia.  _

_ Armitage. His tormentor and--  _

Friend?

“Anything,” the boy gasps, shuddering and drawing an uneven breath, a wheeze audible in his voice. “Please, Armitage.  _ Anything.” _

The ginger feigns a frown, unfolding his skinny arms, the loose gown bunching at his elbows. “Come here, Finn. Everything will come to pass. I’m here, am I not?” 

He tucks the servant to his chest, one hand cradling the back of his near-shaven head in a facsimile of what a parent might do. Finn can feel Hux’s mouth-- _ silver-tongued, wretched--  _ against his ear, the hot musk of his tongue insufferable in the worst of ways. Hux is still too near, and too  _ villainous,  _ yet too caring for a being of evil. Vile, but not evil. Not like…

Tears swell in Finn’s eyes and he bunches Armitage’s gown within his fists, his head slipping to hide against the crook of his neck. Armitage is pale, but his throat is lined with marks--  _ love-marks,  _ across his collar, and a jagged scar which Finn has not noticed before. He tenses, uncertain, slipping back into silence, allowing the callous comfort of Armitage’s skeletal body, whatever  _ emotion  _ he might find in this cruel embrace.

“You will be quite fine, Finn.  _ Quite,  _ really. After all, you’re mine, now. And I take very good care of those I deem  _ worthy.” _

* * *

 

 

Hux has seen enough of  _ barter,  _ of  _ politics,  _ to understand the technique of negotiating. Though he does not enjoy negotiating, per se, in the same manner which he enjoys  _ control,  _ the feel of power within his grasp and the ability to manipulate others in whatever way he deems best. For that matter, Hux has always been adept, even skilled, some might say, in getting what he wants while befitted with a lesser position.

As expected, once again, Armitage Hux gets what he wants.

He is thirty-two now; not the youthful  _ bride  _ he had been once, but a more elegant being who understood how to work with what he was given. Perhaps cheating his way through life was not a method seen as desirable, but Armitage had always been one for fighting dirty. Why should he idolize sanctity when others were keen to  _ leer,  _ to  _ touch  _ and  _ use _ him as they might a plaything? Why should he not take advantage of their weakness, their own profligacy?

No. Humans were all pawns, pieces on a large playing table, waiting for a sign of fate to be ordered by their maker. Hux was only playing the game. It was what Brendol would have wished, for him to  _ grow a set of balls,  _ to no longer be that fragile, weak-willed  _ slip  _ of a thing he’d grown up as.

And so, at thirty-two years of age, Armitage Tarkin (nee Hux) is remarried to Dopheld Mitaka, under the guise of  _ love.  _ Love, which Armitage is uncertain he has ever felt, which Finn is keen to  _ remind  _ him is not in his nature. No, what he feels for Mitaka,  _ his sweet, sweet Mitaka,  _ is nothing more than a sense of loyalty, a desire to take comfort from whomever might allow it to him.

Hux feels nothing in the manner of  _ lust,  _ not as a typical man might. He is  _ abnormal,  _ abnormal enough that, before the consummation of his  _ newfound happiness,  _ he takes an hour teasing himself to hardness, trying to remind himself that  _ this  _ is what he wants, just as Tarkin had been what he’d wanted, once before.  _ Tarkin,  _ with whom this intimacy had been very similar, who had chased his own pleasure before Hux’s own as he finished himself.

Was  _ lust  _ real? Perhaps, from a biological standpoint. But Finn had been wrong on one level: love was a thing of fantasies.

Hux presses Mitaka back into the mattress once they are alone in the younger’s quarters, draped with splendor of rich, purple curtains and soft blankets. He nips at the boy’s mouth, coaxes it open with his tongue, appreciative of the way Dopheld’s hands climb up his back, splayed over the white and gold of his corset, tucking into the lacing with a tiny moan. Mitaka had the manner of a devoted acolyte, reverent in his touches, settling hands along Hux’s hips and gripping, fingers against the small of his back, pressing into the curve of Armitage’s spine until he pitches,  _ whines.  _

The white lace is secured by a section of hoop, a more attractive style than letting his skirts bunch and hang as a deadweight, but uncomfortable. Hux doesn’t protest when Mitaka rids him of the garment completely, left only in his stockings, his corset and undergarments, seeming off fineries when on his otherwise naked body. His ribs jut, a constant point of loathing, waist shaped into a perfect hourglass where his husband’s hands might rest as they watch each other.

Hux allows Mitaka to trace his perineum; his body is already open and waiting, accepting the intrusion of an enticed fingertip without hassle, making sure to relax his jaw and drop back into the penetration.  _ I need you,  _ he tells Dopheld,  _ I  _ want  _ you.  _

It’s hardly a passage of time before Dopheld is inside him, his cock filling Armitage both deeply and intimately, a shockwave of pleasure coursing through him as his stomach turns. He leans over the boy, mouths at his neck while he rides him-- the sex is not rough as he supposes it should have been. But then, Dopheld is anything but rough, a gentle and  _ nervous  _ lover, worshipping him with snippets of praise.  _ Please, Armitage. Y-you’re so beautiful, so pretty. I’d let you have me, if you want-- I just want to hold you, let me hold you. You have a lovely smile-- please,  _ **_please._ **

Hux curls into his longtime  _ friend’s _ side, an arm slung about his waist, intimate. His eyes flutter shut; he thinks, momentarily, of Finn, of what Finn might say to this whole charade, of how Finn would  _ know  _ that, at this unfortunate marriage, Hux has tired of Mitaka’s attention. No, Mitaka has grown  _ useless,  _ a means to an end that Hux cannot yet see. 

“-- accompany me?”

“For what occasion, dear?” Hux questions, unenthused.

“Leia Organa’s ball. The dance. I-I thought…”

That  _ does  _ grasp his interest. A name flickers through the forefront of Hux’s mind; simple, short, inelegant.  _ Ben Organa-- Ben Solo.  _

“Of course,” Armitage says. “I’m your husband.”

_ Until I am, inevitably, not. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes, Hux and Finn's dynamic is slightly resemblant of the Queen and Snow White, for obvious reasons; those parallels will be even clearer later on.
> 
> to anyone who is sticking with me, next chapter is where the gruesome factor will really take off.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> honestly this is where hell begins.

**… Third**

 

 

Ben has never enjoyed attending the galas which Leia Organa holds every year. Her main company comes in the form of those in the realm of business, wealthy bankers, traders and lawyers, prominent figureheads in the government who only show because of the sway the Organa reputation has over them. Ben, himself, has always loathed such displays of necessitous chivalry; the entire thing is a compassion that would be unwarranted if their family hadn’t been of noble blood. Those who attend are ridiculously ignominious, oftentimes barbaric, the type of people to lie to one’s face, falsify affection, and spit on them behind their back.

This is fact, evident in every aspect of Ben’s daily life, his interactions, his relationships. Even the few he once thought he could trust were _filthy,_ rife with wickedness because they couldn’t hold their tongues. Backstabbers, double-crossers, _traitors._

He has always much preferred the comforting weight of a blade steady in his hand to the partnership of another human being. There were miracles in blood, the force of all life in their realm, often considered to have healing properties. Ben had ingested it, before, drank it in the hope that life’s blood might heal his insides-- _putrid, rotten, festering from the inside--_ but that, ultimately, failed.

Everything attributed to him, Ben Solo, failed, as it was bound to. Save for killing.

It hadn’t driven him mad, but the ease in which he could sever a human spine, snap a neck, drive a dagger deep into a beating heart, was phenomenal. In fact, it was the only _phenomenal_ thing about Ben; he had heard his mother conversing with his uncle once he’d returned home, the half-words of _haunted_ and _not himself_ and _failure, impure, wouldn’t have been able_ making their home in the corner of his mind reserved for loathing, Ben’s self-critique of his own flaws.

He had never felt more alone than he was now.

But, in hindsight, Ben Organa-Solo had always been rather unseemly. Destined for solitude as a result of his own misfortune.

Whether it was from the derisive glint in his eyes, a choleric thing that promised great pain to any who dared cross him, or the air of mystery he shrouded himself with, an isolation and solitude that projected as clearly as any word ever would, Ben himself could not say. For that matter, there were very few things of which he could say, of which he was certain enough to voice; the boy had become very used to holding his tongue, out of both an antisocial inclination as well as a frustration over his childhood.

As the son of a noblewoman, his mother’s legacy overshadowed much of his own capacity for speech. His strength, while overt and intense like no other, seemed temperate when overshadowed by the besmirching gazes of those who surrounded him and the absence of his father, a “lowly thief” who Leia had cast aside for the greater good. It seemed fitting that she would be unnerved at the thought of Han’s pastimes tarnishing her reputation, least of all as a _woman_ of power.

Leia, in the end, seemed to feel quite similar in matters pertaining to Ben. Ben had been, for his part, a _decent_ child. Certainly not pure, but wholesome enough, and fairly judicious; he understood societal norms and the hierarchy of castes, even as separated as they had become now. He also understood that Leia _did not want him._ No, she thought him a hindrance-- his own mother-- and would sooner have cast him aside than attempted to provide him comfort.

 _You take after Han,_ she had told him once.

And then, much later, _you take after your grandfather._

The grandfather that Leia had loathed to even mention, the man whom she had cast slight upon slight over, _slandered_ by every stretch of the mind, who she deemed _perversely twisted--_ and she thought _Ben_ was his familiar, that they were _alike._

So when Ben had been sent away, he hadn’t argued; there was no point. His rigidity came in measures of silence and disdain, shirking Leia’s name for his own _greater good._ A greater good that he would find, but only without the tight grip of family, the _hold_ of power they kept over him.

He was their son, of their blood, but Ben Solo was not _theirs._ He was not _theirs_ to control, to taint or to _typecast._

But those who knew him, had been made to spend time in his presence, thought differently. _An animal in need of muzzling,_ a boy had whispered one year, the insult a final curr on Ben’s unfortunate state of being. _Dark--broken--volatile. Unwanted-- House Organa…_ **_black sheep._ **

_Well._ That was to stop immediately. Ben didn't mind getting a bit of blood on his hands for the preservation of his sanity; no, rather he came to find that he quite admired the slick spray of red droplets on an otherwise pristine surface, the ease in which it clung to pale flesh and stained him through...

What he minded was condescension, the ever-present sense of _failure_ that weighed on his shoulders, infinitely. Even in return to his mother, Ben knew Leia only ever saw half of him… the _weak_ half, the undesirable, unfortunate little _Ben Organa._ And that legacy, that _troubled, angst-ridden child,_ was a heritage he could never fully escape.

_Through pain, I gain knowledge… through knowledge, power…_

Ben repeats the words as though they are a mantra, his hand clenching tight about a length of beads curling over his fist, the disfigured cross affixed to the end made as a symbolic testament to his own uncertainties.

_Death absolves me._

_My existence is a mere stepping point._

 

* * *

 

 

“I feel absurd,” Armitage murmurs, turning slightly on his heel, the worn hem of his dress slightly too high, grey ruffles pinched in an indelicate manner, unsettled over his waist and the brittle hoops of his figure. His collar is lower than usual, a frustration he’d made to cover up with the shield of his veil, a steel color lining the pallor of his expression, his bloodless cheeks and bitten lips. Dopheld’s hand is steady against the small of his back-- or as steady as it could possibly be-- and his expression mirrors admiration, if nothing else.

“I find you perfect,” his new husband says, that timid voice carrying with an insecurity, obviously desiring more than this arrangement. Whereas Tarkin had been content to fuck Armitage and then _leave_ him to clean himself up and resettle, Dopheld is _affectionate,_ needing constant attention and validation for his efforts. While it had been rather sweet at one point, Hux feels smothered. There is a difference between worship and _devotion,_ though he had not seen it before.

Now he finds the shift more drastic than ever… and more _demeaning._

“What time are we to depart?”

“Soon,” Mitaka answers him. “W-when you think best, Armitage. Sorry.”

And there was _that,_ that soft stammer, the tendency to tremble when Hux deigned to express his discomfort or dislike of something… _infuriating._ Asinine. Dopheld was scared of him, perhaps even _terrified,_ though Hux could hardly understand why. After all, is he not exactly the same as he always was?

 _Perhaps he knows,_ Hux’s head echoes, jovial. _Perhaps he knows you no longer desire him._

“My _intelligent_ husband,” Armitage says, then, pinching the man’s cheeks. Even if the action is only driven from a need to keep Dopheld pliant, the pink that rises to his cheeks is quite exquisite. “So considerate of my feelings, Dopheld. Would you retrieve my coat for me? Please?” He bends down, slight, touching his lips to the other’s and smiling into the half-kiss, _fond._ If it is fake it is unimportant; why dwell on the inevitable, of course?

“Yes. Certainly-- I’ll be at the door, love.”

Armitage pauses a moment before the mirror, turning to his side with a hand laid across his slim waist, trailing over the line of his bodice. He feels more delicate, now. _Softer,_ though in a manner that only spurns his excitement. The light shade of the fabric paints him in a light far more regal than his black garments of before, gentle, subtle-- _made_ in the image of sainthood.

Perhaps, if he is lucky, he’ll draw eyes tonight. He has so looked forward to meeting _Ben._

 

* * *

 

 

_Faint._

The canvas is as colorless as it always is, lines of figures against a backdrop of a grey room, lavishly decorated in a manner which Ben has no care for. His mother’s tastes seem out of decorum, far past extravagance, though perhaps it is merely her heritage which has thrust this image upon everyone. Though, Ben supposes it is an opinion without value, now. He is already disgusted by the monotony of these events, held with no form or reason other than the entertainment of politics. Politics, the practice Ben detests with everything that he is-- pride, sanity, dignity.

 _I would be better leaving this ruckus early, if only so as not to further ‘disgrace’ myself around dignitaries._ He muses, and the hand cupping a delicate glass between thick, calloused fingers tenses, hold ever tighter. Ben has felt out of his element since he came downstairs earlier that evening; the sea of faces both unrecognizable and familiar a disservice to his already crippling antisocial persona.

Yet his mind seems incapable of flitting to other thoughts; no, he is _made_ to focus, to dwell on this crowded room and the _revolting, vile creatures_ that surround him. He half slouches against the wall, the glass wobbling in his hand while his eyes meet the floor, plagued. The only relief he is given comes through the muted sound of his own blood rushing in his head, the _thump-thump_ of his heart, the _splitting echo_ of bone clipped in full and wrenched open…

A corpse, littered with the blows drawn by a slim silver blade, fingers slid inside the shorn skin to explore. Blood, seeping out around them and coating him in a mess of internal fluids, the subtle squish of guts as they parted around his hand to make room. Accommodating-- he adored it much in the way he might have adored sex, were it given freely. Likewise, his best contact so far had been with a mutilated corpse.

Rey was his first, so _lovely_ when silhouetted in faint white hues, her brown hair messy and eyes glazed over in eternal slumber. Even with that, her mouth had been warm and wet, her body willing and so bare, striped with marred flesh and blood, allowing him to take as he wished. She’d watched him through it, her hands braced in between them, emphasizing just how _tiny_ she was made, her figure that of a doll or a princess of lore.

Ben-- _no, Kylo, Kylo--_ had clutched her tight to him while he’d fucked her, the blood coating his body the best gift he had been offered for over a decade.

“You appear to be out of place.”

Ben’s eyes shoot up, his brow furrowed, hands tense. Before him stands a figure; near as tall as he is, but slight, narrowly built with such pale skin he’s certain even touching would cause them to bruise. Their slender form is outfitted in a grey dress, ruffles of chiffon and sleeves trimmed in satin, the finery of bourgeois.

“Perhaps.” Ben grits his teeth so as not to snap. “Though I would imagine you should feel quite comfortable.”

“Rather the opposite.” Their voice is somewhere between masculine and feminine, airy enough to pass either way, though the hold of their shoulders and domineering stride certainly affirms they are not _meek,_ not by a stretch of any imagination. Behind the long veil over their face, Ben thinks he can make out pale skin, fiery locks that blaze similar to a flame.

He wonders whether their blood is of the same shade, wonderfully alight with red.

“Who are you?”

The laugh is entirely surprising.

“I’ve had too many names, Ben,” they continue, their voice bestowing a familiarity of knowledge. It seems ostentatious… _odd._ “Perhaps you would refer to me as Dopheld Mitaka’s wife-- perhaps the grieving Lady Tarkin. Perhaps, before that, a former child of a disgraced figurehead. Or perhaps you would see fit to address me as _Armitage,_ should you desire such a relationship. I’ve been told I’m quite amenable.”

“Armitage?” Ben questioned. “An odd name, wouldn’t you say? Particularly for an honest British woman.”

The woman laughs again, her head tilting back in a method likely meant to be endearing. The line of her pale throat is clearly visible against her collar, a slim sternum and a gentle slope of shoulder. Ben’s palms seem too warm, now, his head too light.

“I am certainly not _honest,_ Ben. For that matter, I daresay there isn’t a guileless thing about me.” A well-groomed hand, adorned with rings, is extended toward him, paused in wait. “Well?”

“I am not your inferior,” Ben sneers, perturbed. “If you have any sense of position at all, you would return to your husband. If you think yourself anything more than a whore, I have no desire of you.”

 _“Well._ The beast does have teeth.” Armitage seems oddly pleased, snatching her hand back and holding it at her side. “A jaw in need of muzzling, Ben. Would you _enjoy_ that?”

“Who _are_ you?” Ben interrogates again, disbelieving. Armitage drapes an arm over his shoulder, slides it partway across his back, pulling him in until the cover of her veil graces his ear.

“Don’t you see it, dear? I am like _you._ You, but better-- _you,_ but _silent.”_

It strikes him; _grieving widow, former child._ Him, but _silent,_ him and yet--

_Wicked._

“How?”

“Would you like to find out?” Armitage asks him, breathless, leaning forward into the now free embrace of Ben’s body, crowding him and holding tight. “Nothing is free of charge, Ben. I find you quite… fascinating. Perhaps we could come to an agreement…?”

Their body is frail, even skeletal once against him, and without the telltale curves of rounded breasts, the supple texture that usually comes with a woman’s form. And yet Ben can feel nothing between their legs, either, not like this; they are abnormal in every way he can fathom, and he wants nothing more than to brush that veil back, see their being free of accoutrements.

Ben tilts his head, his cheek rubbing their jaw with only a slight window of fabric in between, heady. Opening his mouth, he licks his lips, once. He has no experience with sex, with _romance,_ but he has plenty of experience with murder. It’s a compulsion Armitage seems privy to as well; he _moans._

“I _fucked_ them, in the wound. I _fucked_ them, felt them shift and stretch open for me. The blood was so… so _warm._ It made me feel… like nothing else.”

Armitage shudders, fingers touching against his throat.

_“Some call me Kylo Ren.”_

There’s no sound, no movement, then; not even a gasp of surprise, or a winding terror that Kylo has come to expect from anyone who knows him by name. No, there is a pause, a hand tugging on his hair, and then--

 _A wheeze of laughter._ As though he has just made an awful joke, too humoring to be told to anyone else.

 _“And you critique my name?”_ They choke out, patting his shoulder and sinking nails into his coat, a vicelike grip against his broadness. “We will work on that, _Lord Ren._ Perhaps… soon, if you seem so inclined.”

“Inclined to _what,_ my lady?”

“To a lesson in _discipline.”_

And they step back, the shiver in Ren’s shoulders betraying his innermost thoughts; Armitage was _warm,_ unfamiliar and yet so, _so_ horrid, so _disturbed_ that Ren could feel the tension of _mania_ clinging to their skin. Their veil falls into place, again, a hand sliding up to unpin the red curls done up in a knot, pressing their dress back into place…

And then they walk away.

 

* * *

 

 

Ben seemed so unfortunately inexperienced, as though he were almost incapable of processing even their interaction beforehand. It was rudimentary, to say the least, and somehow _chaste;_ the slightly-crooked curve of his jaw flinching in response to Hux’s proximity, his eyelashes fluttering across those pitch orbs, the unsated bloodlust strong within his movements.

The man _touched_ like a killer too, with his hands tight around each of Hux’s slight biceps, pressing him back against the inside of a door and rutting over his waist. He was feral, uncouth-- like an animal in need of training. Hux would have loved to get a muzzle inside that warm mouth of his, tighten it over his jaw to keep him still, but… he had _other_ plans for his lips, his wet tongue, the offensive thing.

“Lie on the bed,” Hux snapped at him, and as Ben offered him only a raised eyebrow, he flicked the man’s shoulder, sudden. “ _Go.”_

And he does; stumbling when Hux rests a hand on his chest, right across the place where his still-beating heart hides inside layers of smooth flesh. Ben doesn’t protest as he’s shoved in a little abrupt _push_ back to the bed, the red-haired man sliding atop him, straddling his waist and sinking forward to crush their lips together in a battle of _lust._

Armitage is far more skilled than Ben is, certainly, and he nips, suckles, _claims_ without abandon, pressing his tongue deep inside Ben’s moist cavern and spreading his thighs further, the hem of his sheer thick tights catching against Ben’s trousers. Hands have fisted in his ginger hair, tugging roughly into each little _thrust_ of Hux’s hips, the smash as they hit Ben’s suddenly.

Ben laughs. “Are you a _man?”_

“Perhaps,” Hux isn’t sure _what_ he is, not really. “Do you care?”

“No. You’re _insanity.”_ And then Ben’s hands are being pinned high above his head, Hux tugging loose the ribbon about his waist (grey, like the rest of it) and jerking the tie into a firm knot about the man’s wrists. Ben writhes, canting his hips forward, shoving a leg up between Hux’s parted thighs as though he believes he still has any sort of control.

Hux smirks. “Good boys are _patient,_ Ben. You’ll work on me first.”

His hoops is the first to go, followed by the removal of the accentuating dress, the fabric folded primly at each corner before Hux sets it down at the edge of the mattress, smoothing over his front. His corset today is white-- white and silver, adorned with paisley, a lace trim holding the back together aside the lacing. His stockings, too, are grey, clipped to a pair of half-briefs that glow silver, a shimmering material that Ren eyes eagerly. Hux’s cock was tucked, before, with the use of restrictive materials, but it is only a moment for him to pull it free now, thumb striping over the head in excitement.

“Mm, _Kylo.”_ Ben’s head jerks up, chin lifting at the name. “You enjoy that, Ren? Me calling out to the killer in you? Excited, all _soaked_ for you, wishing for nothing more than your hands on me, your cock sliding inside my _tight_ hole? I should imagine it’s similar to fucking a wound, though less subsuming. Didn’t she have maggots? Was she _festering?”_ Hux pulls himself up, straddling over Ren’s face, a knee beside his head, grinding himself back onto the man’s large nose.

“I’m going to sit, now. Right on that godawful face of yours, Ren. Going to ride you while you tongue me, deep and thorough, until I’m leaking. And then I’m going to come-- perhaps in that soft hair of yours, perhaps on your cheeks, watch it dribble over your chin. Maybe I’ll cut my mark into you, so you know _exactly_ who you belong to.”

And Hux pressed down.

Kylo’s moan of frustration is muffled into the crease of Hux’s rear, his nose edged into the crack as he struggles for a moment, heaving breaths of _primitive disgust_ while tears prick his eyes. And then, uncertain, his tongue flicks out to lave a stripe along the puckered muscle, Hux’s ass twitching eagerly, desperate to clench around something. He tugs on Ren’s hair, gathering black locks in his fingers and _yanking,_ and Ren gasps, mouth wide open and tongue sliding in _deep--_

_“Oh-!”_

The noise seems enough reward for Kylo to grow excited, leaning up and dipping his tongue back inside, drawing over the contracting walls of Armitage’s most intimate place, attempting to gauge what will draw out more of those _melodic_ moans. Armitage is shifting, sliding forward and rutting back against his mouth eagerly, thighs clamping like a vice on either side of his skull. Both hands slip behind himself, pulling apart his cheeks and exposing his hole, open and wet and _needy,_ a trait Kylo observes with mirth.

“You want something more,” he says. “Do you want me, Armitage? A cock buried deep inside, pushing into your most sensitive area? Fucking you _deep,_ opening you… I’d do it _raw._ Take you raw, slick myself up with your blood as I fucked in and out of you. You’re beautiful-- _too_ beautiful, by the blood--!”

“ _Ren.”_ Hux sighs, breathless. “Oh, _Ren,_ I should smother you for speaking to me like that. You filthy _slut,_ a heathen in the most insatiate of ways. Depraved, looking for something to _fuck,_ yet inept enough you have to make your own hole. Couldn’t figure it out otherwise, you brute? Or perhaps you’d prefer it the other way.” Hux bears down, grinding over those plump lips, Kylo’s teeth nipping at the edges of his stretched entrance, _pulling._

“Nngh-- like that? You would, I suppose. I see it now, so clearly-- you need something to _fill you._ Perhaps you’d enjoy being opened. I’d impale you on my fingers, first, gentle-- you’re clearly a virgin. You might be so tight you could hardly take the first. But I would take my time… stretch you out, press at your sweet spot. I’d stroke it--” Kylo’s tongue is _hot,_ so deep, ravishing Hux’s own prostate and sending off flashes behind his eyelids. Silver sparks and bright lights, his mind faltering in pure _bliss--_

“-- rapidly, wouldn’t stop. You’d be so overstimulated you might beg me to give you my cock. _Me,_ a _woman,_ for all I’m worth. And I might indulge you. I’d like seeing that pretty hole slide open around me. You’d _moan,_ Ren, like a bitch, squirm on me. My teeth would spread marks all down that pretty neck, claw at your sides, mark you as my own. You’d have it, then, the mark of a _witch,_ a black widow’s _bite._ And perhaps I’d drink my fill, take your blood straight from that pretty, thick neck of yours, pump you full of venom instead. You _depraved_ little whore, filthy _murderer--”_

And Hux tenses, clenching up and pulling back, tugging his underwear far enough out of the way that he can spend himself across Ren’s face. His lips, his cheeks, his _eyes,_ those thick eyelashes dripping with his cum, white pearls over tanned skin. Ren surges forward, his teeth biting at Hux’s thigh, _desperate._ He’s so undone, so _undone_ he’s grown uncontrollable, even with his hands bound in the way they are.

He’s pressing Hux down, flat on his back, mouth open and _hissing._ “You think yourself more intelligent, more _civilized,_ Armitage? You’re _worthless._ Sick in the head. A brat who wants to be marked up and drawn into their own demise. You may be poison, but I am _chaos,_ I am rage, I’ll tear out your guts and hang them over your neck, and once I’m done I’ll _impale_ your corpse on my cock, my hands still wrapped around your tiny neck, your pasty skin gone _rotten_ with death. I’ll cut you up, _consume you,_ one piece at a time, if only to have you inside me always. You think yourself _evil?_ I am your _nightmare,_ you _bastard--”_

And Hux’s hands are wrapped around Ren’s neck, tight, when the younger begins clawing marks into his arms, his cock a solid weight on Hux’s leg. He’s not even been touched and yet he’s sticky with cum, and Hux merely has to trace a hand down his spine, over his virgin entrance and the head of his cock, before Ren is _painting him,_ enough seed to make a canvas, all spread across him like makeup. 

Kylo has shorn the inside of Hux’s wrists red with blood, scarlet and alizarin stains dripping from his soft skin, and Kylo is _sucking_ at it, lapping it up on his needy tongue, excitable and reeling from the contact. Hux bites his neck, _harsh,_ his heel pressed into Ren’s waist and forcing him to his stomach, stroking his flesh as one would a pet.

“I _like_ that about you,” Hux’s voice flutters, caught in his windpipe. “I _like_ that you’re as sick as I am. You would follow me, wouldn’t you? We could kill them all, everyone in Britain. I’d keep their skulls and give you the flesh, we could gorge ourselves on their insides every night… _perverted,_ Ren, you and I. Think of what it would be like, together! Killing _together,_ me at your side. You could fuck me over their corpse, strip me apart while I cut you up. We’d _share_ them, too, take turns with their lovely, frigid flesh. _Love. Love--”_

“No,” Kylo says, then, dropping further. His arms catch Armitage around the waist, stretch out along the side of the lithe, bony figure beside him, a finger idly trailing along the crease of Hux’s hip, over the edge of his corset. He grins, then, mocking; not subtle in his disdain for the ginger, nor overt in his _lust,_ made real from their previous activity.

 _“No.”_ Kylo repeats, and Armitage tenses, his back arching as the nobleman pulls himself up, hovers over the dolled-up figure, grinning maniacally. “I’d show you, Armitage. I would. Show you _how._ How to ravish the corpse and relish it and _make use of it._ You’re only good for tricking men, not for _slaughter._ But I would teach you.”

“Mm…” Hux licks his lips, sighs pleasantly, leg tangling behind Ren’s calf. “And what if I have better ways of spending my time?”

“You won’t,” the raven-haired monster answers him, minding Hux’s head and brushing over the long, red locks cascading over his frail shoulders. “Trust me. You _won’t.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter 4 should be up tomorrow if my editing pans out well.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> once again we see how fucked up I can make a fic! tw for gore and cannibalism mentions. also dismembering a body and more abusive relationships (as well as hints of a previous healthy one omg!)

**_Fourth._ **

 

 

Finn’s body is aching when he wakes, curled in on the broken-spring mat that had sufficed as a “bed” for the past year. It wasn’t an unusual feeling, to wake on a morning both dismal and grueling, watch the grey sky shadow the long-desired light… but now, this morning, something pulses abnormally in his gut. It’s a flare of trepidation that he can’t seem to put a name to. Perhaps, he considers, it was the dream… his fantasy versus the agonizing reality he is doomed to face in daytime.

Waking had always left him cold, the droplets of sweat beading on his brow providing a bone-deep frigidness, the thin coverlet draped across his body a scarce protection from the surrounding room. The echo of snoring from the wall adjacent to Finn’s head seemed more an anchor than anything, a steadfast reminder of his presence in the living world. 

The imprint of a hand on his neck, from a force he cannot name, says otherwise. It has left Finn with a deep-rooted horror, uncertainty rooting from the inevitable promise of his death. Too soon, he thinks of bloody droplets lining bedsheets, he thinks of flickering blue eyes devoid of life entirely, he  _ hurts  _ with the visceral image of everything lost.

_ Brown hair, gentle locks, smooth skin and the curve of a shoulder. A head leaning against his chest… an arm over his waist. Both of them, taken, taken too soon, I shan’t have it back, can no longer find them, Gods, it  _ **_hurts._ **

When he takes his time to gather the usual supplies, sodden rags and a basin and heavy brush, from the closet, his hands tremble; Finn has never felt so out-of-control of his own body, as though it were both his suppression of trauma and unwanted conditioning that were beginning to unravel at the seams. Perhaps, however, it is merely  _ him--  _ accursed, beyond the point of tranquility.

“You seem unwell.” The clipped tone of a polished accent behind him catches Finn’s attention; he hunches forward over the basin, not replying for as long as he can keep quiet. 

Then, slowly, “I was going to fetch some water, m--”

“ _ Unwell,”  _ Hux says again, feet light as they pad across the floor. He slumps into a chair, inelegantly, the dark circles marring the porcelain skin beneath his eyes seems a testament to his own restlessness. “Sit.”

Finn pauses, shakes his head; he doesn’t have a say, however. A hand clamps tight around his wrist, tugs him down into the seat beside Hux so fast the weighted brush nearly slides from his grasp.

“Have you ever hated, Finn?”

“I wouldn’t--” Finn shrugs his shoulders, not expecting the question. He shifts for a moment, Hux’s hand drawing circles over the inside of his wrist.

“I am uncertain,” he starts again, soft, “if what I feel would constitute as hate. Loathing, perhaps-- not as strong. I suppose I wouldn’t see the point in  _ hatred,  _ not when I am also at fault for…”

Hux purses his lips, a habit done out of consideration. He is  _ pleased  _ with the answer, strangely enough; Finn can see it in his eyes, the relaxation of his posture as he settles, slightly.

“I hate my father,” he says, red-gold hair obscuring his face. “I do, Finn, with every ounce of my being, myself in entirety. I  _ hate  _ him.” He frowns. “For some reason I never hated Tarkin. Nor you-- perhaps… perhaps I  _ see  _ something in you.” Armitage laughs half to himself, seemingly amused with whatever sort of thought he'd conjured.

“Yes, I think that must be it. You remind me of myself, as I might’ve been, once. Passionate.  _ Glowing.”  _

Hux runs his hand over the line of Finn’s shirt, past his collar to his waist. Those fingertips are ice dipped in venom, sure to split the younger man apart should Hux feel slighted at all. Finn knows him too well-- the darkness burrowed under his skin,  _ the deceiver.  _ He allows his lips to twitch up into a half-smile, stiff. 

“You should be more mindful of your position. It’s rather easy for one to lose their innocence, isn’t it? Their _faith_ in our species.” Hux continues, as he kisses Finn’s cheek, lip dragging across the bone of his jaw, a huffed chuckle. “If I were _him,_ I would’ve had you broken, would’ve cut you up and rendered you unwhole, a mass of blood and flesh. But I’m not him, you understand? I never have been. I'm _civilized,_ not a mindless beast with the control of a child. And I do this because I _care,_ dear _.”_

The oddness of the situation is not lost on the servant, and he flinches as Hux draws out of his chair, Finn’s cheek coated by the vile texture of ruined makeup and an icy kiss. Hux’s dress is ripped in places which he cannot hide, the silver-sheen lace clumsily torn at, linen stretched far beyond what it should be; his arms, now, are half-lined with blood, and he’s grinning, pulled close to himself.

He is a picture of madness.

“You’ll find no need to worry about Mitaka today,” Hux says, as though reading his thoughts. “Though I considered making my way into town, if you feel up to indulging me.” He huffs, drawing hands over the bodice of his white-gold regalia, as though believing he could smooth out the clearly ruined fabric. “Be prompt with an answer, dear.”

“I-- yes.” Finn blinks once, flicking his tongue about his lips in an apparent temptation to speak more. It is only once Hux has turned, his back turned toward the servant, that he finds himself capable of words.

“Why do you do it?” He asks. “Why do you use them?”

“Why do you  _ ask?”  _ Hux questions, not budging.

“Because it isn’t right. Morally-- I… I don’t know much of morals, ‘course, but it doesn’t… seem. Appropriate, sir. How you can so casually talk about  _ killing  _ someone, how you can  _ do it  _ without flinching. I never understood. Is it in your head? Are you simply past caring? Does it… does it make you feel  _ good?” _

The last inquiry sits in his throat, heavy like a stone plugging his airway, an impossibility. To find killing an  _ amusement  _ is disgusting; and yes, Finn has  _ hurt  _ people. He’s traded blows, he’s fought back, defended himself, but he’d never done  _ this.  _ Not the type of cold-blooded  _ hedonism  _ that Armitage used, nor the unseemly brutality of Ren. It makes his fingers twitch, his shoulders tighten. 

Not for the first time, he misses Rey.

“Armitage?” He asked again, sudden.

“My father taught me that I should use whatever means I could to make something of myself. That even if I was  _ weak,  _ stupid and worthless, if it came down to it I needed to use whatever I could to keep myself on top. Is that moral? Most likely not, and yet from my viewpoint… I am only doing as I was taught, Finn. So I suppose it’s all a matter of perspective, isn’t it?”

“It doesn’t justify murder.” Finn snapped.

Hux grins, tilting his head back to stare at the boy, drill into his frame with the animosity of his being. “Dear boy, who said I wanted to  _ justify  _ anything?”

 

* * *

 

 

A fortnight after the day on which which Dopheld Mitaka died, Ben Solo pulls himself out of bed to an empty space beside him, still faintly warm and heavy with the musk of sexual misconduct. His chest is marred by lines drawn through terse pale flesh, head aching something awful and  _ spinning,  _ an overwhelming compulsion to  _ hurt  _ crawling along the inside of his spine. 

A door clicks open from across the room, adjacent to his bed; the first sight the man was greeted with appeared as tangled locks of bright red hair, draped across narrow shoulders shrouded purely with a thin, black cotton. The fabric is wrapped loosely over Armitage’s frame, though pulled in by a cinched bodice laid-over with silver clasps down the center. 

“Rest well,  _ dear?”  _ The maniacal hint of laughter in his newfound partner’s voice rang true, a testament to their own depravity as Armitage leans over, setting a cup filled with a rather potent substance down atop the end table. He doesn’t deign to pass a single glance in Ren’s direction. The ginger’s spine is stiff, posture rigid enough that when Kylo trails fingers over the sensual curve of his waist, he trembles, arching forward on instinct.

“I truly imagined you made a habit of disappearing from your lover’s home when day came.”

“Well, Ren, if you must know, I often do. It isn’t generally possible for a man to hold my attention more than a few weeks, months if I decide they’re of value. But then, I don’t generally fetch a glass to drink blood with many, either,” Hux nods toward the filled cup, mirthful. “Go on, won’t you? I thought you might enjoy a gift.”

Then, as if beckoning, Armitage slides onto the mattress, propped forward only by his crooked elbows, bent at the waist and observant. Kylo reaches out, plucks the glass from the table; the crafted material is weightless in his hand, slight enough that he could break it by twisting his fingers indelicately. Though, of course, he had once thought the same of Armitage, this  _ blood-haired witch  _ who knew how to play people as one might play chips.

Appearing to have read his thoughts, Hux pulls his legs up, at the knee, spreads them over the bed’s edge, inviting and meant to tease. Kylo lifts the glass to his lips, paused until Hux purses his cheeks. Then, deviously, he stretches out one long leg, foot curled up tight against the fabric covering Ren’s crotch, a soft bulge beginning to tingle under the adept push of his sole. “Drink up, Ren. I want you to fuck me once the blood is dripping from your lips, smearing your chin like some dirty animal.”

Kylo pauses with his lips across the sparkling rim; he watches Hux, the languid picture of indulgence spread out across the mattress. He’s a whore, certainly; someone who should be revolting, a skinny, manipulative  _ murderess,  _ glad to use anyone who bats an eye at him.

“What a depraved little thing you are,” Kylo says, smirking. “Longing for someone to fill you, deep and heavy, pump you up with their fluids, paint blood across your skin. Do you enjoy this, Armitage? Being a savage in civilized clothing?”

The glass is being tipped then, not by his doing; Hux has flown from his position, pressed forward and knocking Kylo back. His hand is on the man’s thick neck, yanking on those matted raven locks as he presses the goblet up, the bitter iron of blood filling his mouth. Kylo is practically choking on the sudden movement, gulping blood around air and swallowing too rapid, too fast. His throat burns, chest heaving with the effort as he wrenches Armitage’s brittle wrist , wrestles him down halfway onto the bed, anything resembling manner forgotten as he pins the other down. He’s a force of loathing, a witch, sinking teeth and nails into Kylo’s skin already, so hard it  _ burns,  _ and his blood is set alight with fire.

He doesn’t bother with preparing Armitage; it is the last thing he deserves, with his haughtiness, his defiance, the snub of his nose and upturned chin. Kylo shoves two fingers into him, unceremonious, forces a third in alongside. The skin of his tight hole tears, dribbling with the sweet, sweet force of Hux’s blood. Kylo wonders if it’s red, if it’s normal at all; he thinks perhaps it is tar, the pitch-noir of the Devil’s servants.

Hux wails, and hikes his legs up, spreads himself wider. He wasn’t wearing underclothes, his genitalia and loosened hole on display for anyone wishing to slide themselves beneath his skirt.

Kylo crooks his fingers; the scream Hux makes is more delicious than any he’s ever heard. It’s a primal cry, pleasure incarnate. Even Rey hadn’t the chance to make such melodic noises, when they had coupled.

_ “You repulse me,”  _ Hux hisses at him, but even then he is scratching at Ren’s back, legs around his body in a vice-hold, crying so beautifully at each push and pull of Ren’s fingers inside his fluttering hole. “ _ Ungh, Ren. I wish-- kill. We could kill them all… rip out their innards and feast. Dance nude in the light of the moon, drenched in their blood. S-so… impossibly  _ beautiful.”

Kylo is all too aware now, too aware of the void within Hux, a violent, clawing thing, demanding constant sacrifice. He’s little more than a monster with a pretty face, something made for greed and betrayal. And Kylo is  _ enticed. _

He’s being turned, harsh, Armitage still riding his fingers, fucking himself on them as if he can hardly get enough. There’s something being pushed deep into Kylo’s chest, slid through his skin, and momentarily he thinks to scream-- but no.  _ No,  _ they are pins, pins tucked inside that sleek corset, making him a voodoo doll, a plaything for the damned. Ren arches, gripping at Hux’s shoulder, watching as another pierces his skin, through one side and out the other; Hux’s fluids are painting his chest in stripes, a lovely paint on the canvas of his abdomen, and then he is sinking, falling atop Kylo with his face pressed against a collarbone, sated. 

“I enjoy our games, Ren,” Hux whispers. “This is… sanguine.”

He slides up, bracketing Kylo’s hips with his own, brittle limbs shifting without focus when he presses back to tease the head of Kylo’s cock over his ass. Eyes tightly shuttered and hair matted, blood soaking his pretty hands, Armitage grins a devious grin, sinks back onto him in a fluid movement-- and  _ oh,  _ he's still open, an eager, spread flower, wet and warm inside as he clutches around Kylo’s cock, quivers with the sudden jolt of his prostate being hit…

“Do you… do you need me, pet?” Hux breathes at last, deafening. “You do, you filthy animal. You know--”

_ “Please,”  _ Kylo cries and his face contort in an expression of pleasure, everything he cannot seem to vocalize.  _ “Please, Armitage, I-I…” _

_ “Shh,  _ Ren. You'll be quite well. I take good care of my toys.”

 

* * *

 

 

Through Kylo’s experience of knives, blood and steady hands, it has quickly become quite obvious that Armitage has never dismembered a body before.

His grip seems unsteady on the large cleaver, delicate fingers wrapping swift and tight about the handle, though they’d gone white-knuckled and tense. Kylo’s arm encircles the ginger’s shoulders, grasping tight on his wrist and adding momentum to each precise  _ thwack _ Hux makes into the human arm lying dead on the counter. Armitage’s breath is heavy, coming in soft gasps that could’ve been reminiscent to something heard in a brothel-- Kylo has never heard anything sweeter.

He is bent forward, enough that his naked lower body presses flush to the slimness of Armitage’s hips, the curve of his pretty ass, covered by a thin pair of torn knickers, stripes of well-bitten pale cheeks silhouetted beneath the fabric. Kylo moves a hand lower, palms at the swell of Hux’s most intimate body part; he watches his pretty thing  _ whine,  _ hissing and shifting backward, bending over just a tad more as those dainty hands slide slick with blood, fingers sinking into cleaved flesh.

“Is this what it feels like… love?” Kylo questions, kissing Armitage’s freckled shoulder, pressing a thumb into a mottled bruise. Hux doesn’t answer; instead he moans again, continuous, opening his legs and licking blood off of his own digits. His hair is done in a single, plaited braid down the center of his back, all rose-gold and silken. It is nothing like that hideous pale-brown hair, dark and straight and straw-like, that their victim wore as some sort of  _ asset.  _ As though she were an asset, rather than a whore--

“You seem to assume I know what love feels like, Ren,” Armitage comments, endearing, and he flips himself over to watch Kylo, counter’s edge digging into the small of his lower back, biting a plush pink lip until it splits. His hips buck forward, thighs coming to hook around Kylo’s waist as arms hoist him up onto the counter alongside the corpse. A tingle of excitement erupts from the killer’s center, spiraling out through his limbs, desperate to consume; how long has it been, since they’d first laid eyes on each other?

“I tire of men so easily,” Armitage admits, then, kissing Kylo and sinking his teeth into his rosebud mouth, crushing their tongues together in an even display of dominance. When he pulls back for air, his cheeks are rouged, absolutely  _ wanton.  _ Breathless, Kylo shoves him back by the shoulders, watches Armitage’s weak little figure hit the cabinet, crashing loud. 

“But not me,” he says, then. “Not  _ me,  _ because I’m not like other men. I’ll  _ ruin  _ you. Your head, your heart, your sweet little hole.” Kylo snaps the banding of the undergarments, grinning when Hux yelps. “All of you belongs to  _ me,  _ Armitage. Nobody else would satisfy you. Nobody else knows you long for the taste of human flesh, the feel of a corpse hugging your pathetic cock, your need for  _ chaos.  _ So deprived, you’ve been, doll.”

_ “Yes,”  _ Armitage tells him, and reaches back to press his own blood slick fingers along his crease. “I want you  _ inside,  _ Ren. Inside, outside--  _ I would wear your flesh like a coat.” _

Kylo roughly jerks on Hux’s wrist, manhandles him until his legs are up and thrown over his shoulders, unceremoniously jamming two fingers deep into that pink clutch, shifting. Hux cries out and Kylo pulls the corpse’s rotting hand up, pushes it between the older’s lips. 

“You need a real man to show you what passion is. Not like those wraiths you had before, half-human and less than useful. I can fuck it out of you, their disappointment… fill you with my seed, fill you so much you’ll only remember me.”

Armitage sinks teeth into a half-stripped finger, bone smashing against bone once the remains press fully past the barrier of his teeth. He groans around them, eyelashes fluttering, staring Kylo down as though drilling a hole in his skull. It is only once Kylo moves away that he manages to spit out, “No--” and then, “after our treat.”

Their treat, of course, is blood pudding, a bone meal ground down from a large skeleton, the finery of which Gods may feast on yet are denied to man. Armitage licks his lips, hungrily; Kylo finds he quite enjoys the cling of blood across his cheeks. He looks like a maiden disturbed, possessed by bloodlust; Kylo hefts him back into his arms and Armitage laughs, kicks his feet out, aimless. 

“Do you fancy eating men, Armitage?”

“The same could be said of you, Ren,” a soft, compliant voice answered, taunting. “Though I rather fancy  _ you  _ eating me above all else.”

_ Vulgarity.  _ How suiting. “I should think this a celebration for us both.” His teeth graze the juncture of Hux’s neck, a soft white expanse, longing to sink deep and  _ relish.  _ Hux brings a hand to his mouth, laps crusted and wet blood off his ice skin, pushes a finger into Ren’s mouth as he leans aside once more. He finds the cleaver, once more a solid weight in his hands, teases it to the serial killer’s side with a simple sigh. 

“Something more delicate would be appreciated,” he continues. “I want to cut you, Ren, practice my lines-- from that pretty collarbone down to your navel, straight-edged like a line. I’d do it while you take me, while my stomach is already heavy and full from all the bones you’ve forced down my throat.”

“Nothing sounds more wonderful,” Kylo smirks. “Nothing could be more  _ terrible  _ than you, my dear.”

 

* * *

 

 

“Have I ever told you the story about my traitor?” Kylo asks, pinching at the rubbed-raw skin of Hux’s backside, reveling in the shiver gifted to him as his cold hand meets the stinging flesh. His mind is still fuzzy, swarming with a bloodlust that sings in his veins as he remembers the dismembered body downstairs, the blood still spread over Hux’s stretched hole, down his legs. Hux scoffs, loud, clearing his throat once he turns his face to Kylo . He smirks, the look more befitting of a narcissist than a partner, and quirks his head, nuzzling his body back into Kylo’s.

“You seem to think you tell me a lot, Ren. Unfortunately, I seem to be absent for these conversations.” The ginger flicks at his cheek, then, abrupt, dragging a single finger down over his lip and letting it catch in the pout of Ren’s mouth.

“I suppose that isn’t a shock,” Kylo bites his lip, head jerking away from Armitage’s sickly sweet touch, honing in on those strangely colored eyes, now distantly blue like ice. “Though I supposed that you might have known this story. It would be within your realm of… experience.”

“Mm…” Armitage purses his lips, curling around Kylo with a firm pair of arms, bony as they might be. His chest is warm, bubbling with a mirth that he assumes might be comparable with a high from medicine. “Is it a romantic story?”

“Perhaps,” Kylo says when he sighs, tangling fingers in soft, ginger locks. “I did love him first, after all.”

And it was true-- he had loved him, once. Poe Dameron, with his smouldering firelight eyes, his smooth-talking method of attraction, a uniquely appealing quality all its own. Before Rey, even, he supposed, though Rey had remained his fascination for years, the servant girl with the sharp tongue and the inherent  _ power  _ in her voice…

Neither, then, had been scared of him. 

Neither, and yet it was Poe who had ended up crossing him, who had  _ fraternized  _ with a dark-skinned servant, kept him out of Ben’s reach, ushered him away without an end to his contract. A mere  _ F  _ and  _ N  _ scrawled on his form in place of a name, in  _ Dameron’s  _ writing nonetheless, and he’d been lost forever to Ben. The witness, the  _ only  _ one who had the gall to curse his name, call him a  _ murderer-- _

“Perhaps another time,” Kylo speaks, then, biting his own tongue. “My mind is elsewhere.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> coming up to the denouement now. i'm terribly sorry for how long it took to post this. I've been in varying states of sickness for the past month and it's only now that I'm sort of coming back to myself.

**_fifth_ **

 

Kylo passes a fortnight, or perhaps longer, without the ever-present figure of a slender redhead darkening his doorstep. In Hux’s stead, the darkness of the nighttime streets is a welcome presence, an obstruction of the _divinity_ which his uncle brings during each visit and taints the corridors of his mother’s home with. It seems somewhat fitting that, from his entire lineage, only _Kylo_ is capable of seeing the energy, capable of _removing_ himself from it, content to retire to his quarters as his familial relations linger in idle conversation over holidays and political events. Leia seems to have recovered her revolutionary side through the past months-- she spends a great deal of time conversing with Luke about Marxism, a subject which Kylo holds near to no thought on.

Matter of fact, all Kylo has been capable of drawing into his thoughtful mind for weeks is the sinister shine of well-kept metal, trails of blood over wood and stone where a body had once lain… it is more distracting, now. With the lack of time spent indulging his unquelled blood lust beside Armitage, his mind grows weary with the pretense of dissociation, a separation of his spirit from his body.

He finds himself relieved when his doll appears once more, Hux’s hands folded over a long skirt, black and pleated around the hem at his waist. The bodice is a strange amalgamation of purple velvet and black lace, a pattern so common it is reminiscent of everything Ben Solo _loathed_ about the bourgeois; he has no idea how Armitage is able to afford such fineries, so many unusual dresses to adorn his slight, reedy body on a daily basis.

It doesn’t quite matter, regardless-- Kylo enjoys peeling those clothes off of him all the same, and the stains of dried blood against the inside of Armitage’s corset never fail to elicit a sense of fulfillment deep in his gut. His mind swims with it, the heady, cloying scent of death, the perfume of putrefaction which clings so wonderfully to corpses and somehow finds its way onto Hux’s skin during even their most innocuous of encounters. Kylo dreams of him, often, lying on the ground and spread out in the same manner as one of his victims, painted whores with glassy eyes and sticky blood-red lips that open to his ministrations too easily once they’ve been subdued. He remembers what it is like, to watch a corpse decay, to enjoy the beauty of cold pallor and bloodless flesh…

Kylo Ren wonders, at times, why he bothers to keep up the facade. Why he deigns to lower himself into playing the role of _Ben_ at all, even so long after the _dreadful_ incident with Han, where Ben had watched his blade slide deep into his own father’s stomach, when he’d gutted him and shorn through his insides, a voracious _beast._

He wonders, at times, when exactly it was that he began to feel weak.

Kylo _loathes_ feeling weak, and perhaps even more than Hux, who is the epitome of fragility; a breakable witch who takes pride in _luring_ his betters into caring for him, who plays with humans as a child might toys, only to dispose of them once he’d gotten bored. It reminds Kylo of someone else he’d known, the very man who cast him aside for a _servant,_ for a lesser mind and a lesser strength. He contemplates and he _stews,_ the abhorrence roiling in his bloodstream when he is alone. Poe could have had the world, and he threw it away-- for what?

But Kylo does not mention it, he does not speak of it, nor does he desire to, now. He walks through back-alleys, lingers in the ungodly light of brothels and taverns, ruminates on his own _self-immolating_ existence and the depths to which he’s lowered himself. One night, he even finds company the way he might have in the past, cracks a pretty girl over the head with the blunt end of his blade and throws her back against the brick of a wall.

He takes his time, bleeding her, but he makes sure to sever the tongue first, so she will not scream. The gurgling of blood as it wells in the woman’s mouth is all too lovely, all too _enlightening,_ and he carves her with the circles that he sees in his dreams, sinking blade into flesh over and over until blood spatters across his front and he buries his face in the tear of her skin and he _tastes..._

Spilling out, over and down his lips, and _oh so beautiful,_ the vivid shades of red that haunt him in slumber. Shades of red that, perhaps, would match Armitage’s pretty red hair, the well-maintained ringlets he longs to grasp in hand and _fist,_ to yank right from his bewitched head and cause him to cry as he never has before.

Yet at the back of his mind, he knows: the killing feels forced, meaningless _without_ Armitage here to watch it, his mocking, dismissive voice, scalding in the manner with which he can throw an insult. He wishes it was Hux beneath him, and yet he wishes him to _see,_ to know how _good_ Kylo can be at taking a body apart, tearing it asunder without him.

Once the blood had soaked his hands, stained his dark apparel and the well-worn leather of his boots, he stands. He cannot bring himself to linger over the body, to _fuck_ it as he might have-- Kylo turns to walk away.

As strong as he is, he has never felt less at ease in his own skin.

 

* * *

 

 

He finds Hux that night, makes his way to the old Tarkin manor on horseback with the dead silence of night falling over his mind; Kylo approaches the door in strides, hardly mindful of the way the hinges screech as he knocks it aside. He peels gloves from his hands, too soaked, _worthless…_

“Ren.”

The voice is self-assured, and there, before him, stands the very figure of his darkest thoughts, barely covered by the sheer material of a white dressing gown, hair fanned out over his shoulders and back. A book is resting beside him on the table, his posture stiff even when not bothered by the trifles of observation.

Kylo storms over to him, fingers tight around the material of his light covering, another drawing hair away from an angular face, abstract and pale with the high cheekbones of an aristocrat. Kylo imagines them torn out, his lips split under the brutality of knuckles, a line of bruises adorning the entirety of his bare throat--

_Magnificent._

“I have brought a gift,” Kylo urges, and Hux laughs in glee, tossing his head back as a large hand slides to grip it at the nape, turn his visage to the faint glow of candles.

“That seems quite unlike you, Ren,” Armitage smiles, shrewd, _devious._ “Shall I be allowed to see it?”

“In due time,” Kylo murmurs, and his hand slips inside the lining of the satchel tethered to his waist, beside his glinting blades. The flap peels back without hassle; he withdraws, carefully, several long, glass containers-- vials, bubbling over with a red liquid.

 _“Oh,”_ Hux says, then waits a moment, stepping away.

“You are mine,” Kylo continues. “Are you not?”

The pretty doll says nothing, pressing a hand over his chest as if he hasn’t a clue what to do, sitting once more.

The words slip his lips, irreverent. “Consider this a proposal.” He slides a hand to Armitage’s cheek, thumb teasing over those plush lips he’s seen stained red so many times before, a shudder coursing through him at the small, kittenish lick of Hux’s tongue on his finger.

“You brought me blood, then. A blood offering?”

“Is it not clever?” Kylo ponders. “Are you unsatisfied?”

“No, Ren. I’d rather say I’m _quite_ satisfied, more than I should ever be. You have… _sated_ something in me, my clever _beast.”_ Hux winds a hand into Kylo’s hair, yanking sharply on the greasy black tangles, both hands stiffly gripping his shoulders.

He surges forward to seal their lips violently, in a bruising, disquieting union.

“Such a _good_ pet, Ren… so _good_ for me.”

Kylo gasps; sucks in his breath, evens it out as he seizes Hux about the waist, drags the other into his bloody arms. “I wish to paint your face with it tonight. It is said blood cleanses the skin-- provides youth--”

“And _immortality,_ oh, Ren, you ghastly devil.” His lover lunges for him, grips his waist tight with thighs hooked behind his calves, kisses him again and bites at his neck with all the fervor of a rabid dog. “Yes, _yes,_ you are _mine,_ always, always mine. Come now, upstairs-- to the study. My own blood is empty, _surfeit_ me, Ren--”

The door slams as the pair of murderers abandon the study, the book falling on the floor with a resounding thud.

Blood drips from a tipped glass on the table. The endless rivulets form a stream of crimson tears.

 

* * *

 

 

Through the crack in the wood of a door hidden out of sight, just past the study and in view of the hallway, Finn presses his hand against the wall beside him. His body is gripped, suddenly, by a wave of terror so deep-rooted it seems inescapable; his breath pauses, the air around him tainted by a chill of bone-deep _evil_ which he cannot push away.

He sits back against his bed, mindful of the way another servant stirs beside him, across the room; his own sheets are sweat-soaked from the grip of his premonition, the _knowledge_ of what is yet to come.

He has nothing to pack, and so he gathers his few possessions, slips out into the hallway-- it is not hard to make his way to the door under the cover of darkness, and his mind finds only solace in the cover of night. The pathway is cobblestone and prods uncomfortably at his tread, but he does not stop-- he begins to run, crossing the field as fast as his feet can carry him to the stables. He needs to leave-- to find haven, if only momentarily, in the only place which he feels with absolute certainty that he can garner any sort of hope.

_Poe Dameron._

Finn’s eyes prickle with the swell of tears at the very pass of Poe’s name through the depths of his subconscious; he pulls himself together with a hand settled on the wood of a dilapidated enclosure, beside the stable, his feet caught around each other and posing a threat of stumbling. His chest heaves, feeling suddenly as though he’s been entirely drained of breath; a haze of red, muddled and bright, makes its way through his line of sight, still dim and overused; it is the lack of sleep, he supposes, or the overexertion of his body. He has hardly needed to run over the past number of years.

Adept fingers remove the rope tethering the door closed, and Finn approaches one of the kept steeds with one arm raised slightly, held out to brush over the animal’s long face. He strokes along the horse’s mane, stiffens.

“Please, don’t make any noise, no noise--” Finn whispers, guiding the animal out of the stable, relatching the door once they were past. His hand stills on the horse’s mane once more, choked up. He can hardly vocalize the matter at hand-- is hardly sure how he’ll ever be capable of saying it to Poe, dredging up all the past memories he only wanted to run from.

It seems, now, that escape was never an option to begin with-- something that both terrifies and soothes Finn, odd as it is. If there had been no chance of running to begin with, and this fate was inevitable… it makes it less dreaded, he decides. If he accepts that he could quite possibly die, could have from the beginning, that this was all a twist of karma rather than a coincidence.

Strangely, Finn realizes, as he is speeding away from the gruesome figures in Tarkin Manor, away from the murder and the bloodshed and atrocity, he’s worried. Worried, not for himself, but for _Armitage,_ as wicked as he is, as well-deserved as his death would be. The thought of abandoning him to a fate with the man who _slaughtered_ Rey, who would have done the same to Finn himself, does not sit well. His stomach groans with a sudden nausea, demanding him to _turn around, go back,_ and yet… it seems wrong, now.

 _An improper time,_ something tells him. _Later. After._

He steadies himself, rights the reins-- and he doesn’t glance at the road behind him.

 

* * *

 

 

“Poe.” Finn says, softly, his mouth having taken on the texture of sandpaper, dry and heavy-tongued, hardly able to think. The man standing before him in the door rubs at his eye, seeming halfway in a trance; his face betrays his surprise only a few moments later, mouth pausing mid-word to gape, before he nearly jumps to alertness.

“Finn?” He questions, and just as anticipated, the harsh line of his mouth breaks into a smile, reaching out and unfolding his arms to bring the disheveled servant into a tight hug. His presence is warm as always, and Finn has to press past the urge to halt his own thinking, to return the gesture and _cling_ to it, the sensation of safety and compassion he’s only ever found among two people. “I must say I hadn’t been expecting… oh, _hells,_ you’re freezing, Finn. A moment.”

Poe slips back to grab something from the coat-hanger inside the door, one hand gripping Finn’s half-bare forearm to wave him in.

“Poe, we need to talk.” Finn pushes, urgently; his eyes are near pitch, glossed over with a frenzied betrayal of his own anxiety.

“Couldn’t be cast aside until dawn?” The amiable smile darkens as Finn shakes his head, drawing away from the light. “This is about Ben… I feel it.”

Poe knows, and _of course_ he does, just as he always has. A weight appears to drop, bending his shoulders and pressing him down, the crushing turmoil of what must have been just as inevitable to him as it had to Finn.

An arm slings about his shoulders, gentle against his frozen flesh, the dark skin lined with a cold sweat even now. Still, Finn is grateful; _appreciative,_ of Poe’s gesture of comfort, even as he seems to be mulling over his own fears, anger still taut in his muscles.

“We should lie down,” Finn says, then, uncertain of why it suddenly presses upon him-- this _need_ to hold Poe, to be with him, to _console_ him at the aftershocks of vivid memory. He gathers the man close, vivid memories of a pleasant intimacy welling in his head just as tears well in his eyes. Poe doesn’t speak, then-- just pulls him into his arms, urges him toward the stairs and crosses behind him until they reach the upper landing.

They fall into bed with a practiced ease. Whether it’s the years of friendship or the small period of time spent as lovers that had been ended far too soon, Finn isn’t sure. Rey still lingers between them, over their heads like a pausing storm, inevitable.

He hasn’t spoken about her-- truly _spoken_ about her-- since the incident itself, since the rift between Poe and Ben had caused the former to flee, rescuing Finn in tow. The honorable act seems undeserved, and yet…

Finn curls around Poe, tightens his arms over the back of Poe’s neck, hands graced by the soft, rich brown of Poe’s hair. He offers a smile, faint as it is; draws back enough to kiss Poe’s cheek. Being drawn into his arms feels like coming home; his true home, somewhere real and honest and filled with hope, a place where he _felt_ loved, felt cared for.

Eternity passes in their gentle space. Tranquility, glowing-- _lightness_ in the midst of a void that nobody had the courage to mend, had the strength to confront. And then there are words-- and they speak.

“How did you know where to find me?” Poe questions. His tone pitches slightly-- taciturn and yet troubled, hinting at a desperation hardly ever voiced aloud.

“I-- I suppose it was…” Finn grasps for some sort of word, unable to explain his own overwhelming sense of fear… the knowledge that came with it, seemingly from out of the air itself, unprecipitated by any action or clairvoyance. _How strange,_ he considers, and his tongue twists on itself the moment he deigns it proper to slide closer to Poe, collapsing entirely in the man’s unfolded arms. Urgency forsakes his mind; large droplets begin to swell and prick at his dry vision, seeping in from the corners, worse than a tinge of blood over his aching eyes. “Intuition. Apologies, sir--”

“No,” Poe clutches tight to Finn’s back, his rough nails dragging through the open fabric of worn clothing. “No, we cannot-- _will not--_ demote ourselves like that, Finn. I’m not ‘sir.’” He taps the warm cheek with a stern finger. “I am _not_ a sir. Not to you.”

Finn quivers; his breath seeps like venom back into his lungs.

“I… am not here for myself,” he finally admits. “Nor for Ben. It was-- Hux. Armitage. I hardly understand myself, though I… I just _know._ I know Ben will kill them, and _Gods,_ they deserve it, Poe, but-- I refuse to let it pass idly. If there’s a monster to be had, I’d rather it be Armitage than Ben… he kills for the sake of _resource,_ not for fun. Not before--”

“Ben is-- Ben is with _Tarkin?_ Lady Tarkin?”

“No, he-- Tarkin is dead, Poe. Armitage killed him. Then Dopheld Mitaka… now Ben is asking for his- _their-_ hand, and I. I am… Poe, my _head._ I can hardly think!” Finn, scrambling away with the aftereffect of his slander, presses a hand tight over his eyes when he stumbles out of Poe’s careful embrace. He pitches over the side of the bed, blindly reaching about in the dark for his discarded shoes.

“Coming here was a mistake,” Finn utters, hollow, breathless. “Th-this entire _farce._ All of it… me, being alive. It was a _mistake,_ Poe, and Rey is _gone,_ and _so were you!_ I was never able to… to face it, it ate me alive, from the inside out! And then Armitage, he was… he is _wicked,_ but he took care of me, he never killed me off, and now I’m letting him die by a monster’s hand just as I did Rey!”

Arms encircle Finn’s back, no easy feat with the manner in which he is thrashing, all rational conceptualization a distant memory. His hand smacks against something hard, only to be taken in a gentle hold, a soft palm stroking the back of cracked and blistered joints.

“Finn. Listen… listen to me, darling. Settle down-- _settle -!_ I have you. I have you, Finn, you’ll be safe. _Trust_ me.”

The unearthly shuddering quells; Poe bundles Finn in his own shed coat, not bothering to do up the buttons. He coaxes him back, with soft, gentle presses against tense muscle, eases him to sitting gingerly on the edge of a mattress as he bends to kiss the back of one bruised hand.

Even now, he knows exactly how to comfort his beloved.

“Hush, now. That’s it, Finn, breathe. In and out, so good for me.” Poe’s own forehead is sweaty, his hands slick from the physical effects of calming a tumultuous mind. “I need you to tell me more. About Ben-- and this Armitage. Catch your breath; you should be careful not to exert yourself.”

Nodding, Finn stills. His mannerism is impulsive, desperate in the need to gain some sort of consolation, and the servant scarcely is capable of stuttering out another breath-- harsh wheezes spout forth, a one-two-in-out. _“I need to go back.”_

 _I know,_ remains unsaid, a mere echo of Poe’s voice against the cry of the draft penetrating the space between them.

It is hardly a consolation.

 

* * *

 

 

Kylo was uncomfortable when he first woke, bleary-eyed and with ringing ears, stressed by the cacophonous echoes of darkness that crept in the night. A pair of thin, spindly arms are slung around his waist from behind, clutching tight to Ren’s muscles with needy devotion he has yet to understand. Red appears before his eyes, the blotted array of smears over once-clean sheets, a thick coat of paint left to dry on his own skin. He wants to laugh, mad and jovial and _insane_ all at once. How mad they both have become.

Hux nestles against him, a soft, snowy cheek flat against the curve of his spine, bare skin quivering from a chill that appears to have crossed him during his sleep. He pauses mid-motion, slumping backward and away once Ren’s heat recedes, and the younger man untangles those frail limbs from around him, presses him back onto the mattress, drinking in the loveliness of Armitage’s form in the nude. It was so rare to see the other without a single garment, his corsets, shifts and heavy coats rarely abandoned unless he needs to draw a bath… yet now, they remain forsaken in lieu of a firm body to lie beside him.

Kylo reaches a hand out, draws his thumb along the quirk in Armitage’s cheek, his deathly pallor a lovely phantasm in dawn’s light. The ginger’s face remains still, mouth parted softly around a tiny yawn before Kylo draws the blankets up to his chest once more.

He barely manages to refocus his own vision when he hears the crack of a door in the hallway; it is incorrect, somehow, and he _knows,_ something improper and out of place in this dimension… a creaking echo in a home that should be otherwise devoid of life.

The floorboards shift with broad croaks against the strain of labored footfalls. Kylo’s shirt hangs partially open, and he struggles to readjust his trousers as he revokes his residence at Hux’s side, moving toward the hall with an effortless silence.

In the hallway, a figure stands alone, silhouetted by a faint stream of sunlight that has appeared from an open window. His skin nearly glows, illuminated in this odd firelight, and yet it is his face as he turns which offsets Kylo’s body.

 _“You.”_ He hisses, and the boy-- _no, a man now,_ Kylo corrects-- offers him a sad expression. His eyes brim with grief, longing and… abject loneliness.

“Yes, Ren. I am alive.” The other’s lips twitch, briefly, his eyes falling on the doorway just within reach of sight at the bottom of the stairwell. “I miss her, Ren… I miss many of them. Did you-- _do_ you ever miss them? The ones who you betrayed? Rey, Poe…”

“Do not _speak_ to me as if you know me,” Kylo spits. “You’re a heathen, speaking of traitors when you, yourself, are nothing more. A scandal, and laughable-- wretched just as Dameron.”

“Perhaps.” Finn’s expression, a face which Kylo would have imagined to be angered, plaintive, spiteful, relaxes. He turns, back to the intricate glasswork from which the light shines, one hand clasped over the mahogany of its sill.

“Have you been here all along, servant?”

“Would it matter?” The return of another question yields no answer, and it is only once Finn’s eyes raise to something behind Kylo’s shoulder that he turns, pulling in on himself with defensive mistrust at the thud along the floor.

“So it _is_ him, is it?” Hux’s voice carries something both melodic and odious, corrupted with the extent of his own darkness; it is _mirthful._ He quirks, as though he is on the verge of laughter, limber body wavering in the doorway. “Well,” he tells them. “Don’t halt your conversation on _my_ account.”

His sheer, white drapings cling to the deathly, frail accents of his physique, red hair tumbling like a river of blood across his shoulders as Hux steadies his back against a high wall. There is a flash of silver, caught between his fingers-- and Finn swallows, as though he’s noticed it as well.

Kylo cannot explain in words the omniscient _hatred_ which surfaces within him, cannot describe the way his skin tingles and his life force pulses deep inside him, spilling out as though he were bleeding. His rigid neck turns, splintered in the joints like a scarecrow, and he _screams._

The words escape his own hearing, a disjointed disaster-- _traitor, liar, traitor, worthless, running away, manipulative, scum, low-class, voyeur, I’LL KILL YOU, I WILL--_ and his hand comes back; again and again, a spray of blood cast along his darkened knuckles and calloused digits. Kylo feels the monster within him, the sensation of bloodlust calling from somewhere deep in his mind as he strikes, strikes and _sees._

Divinity.

Regal splendeur, a _world_ beyond this one, an existence like no other. The multiverse in blood, leaking and trailing all around him, down between columns of blunted bone and over walls of sinewy muscle; _beautiful._ Beautiful, in the same way in which a painting is beautiful, an aesthetic testament to the horror of humanity and the revulsion within _everything._ Kylo rears back, snaps forward and his head collides with a harrowing _thwack_ against Finn’s own.

Arms encircle his back and all he knows is _loathing,_ all he knows is what it means to _sin,_ to defy the binding covenant of his own existence. He reaches forward, cries, wanting to finish it, _let me end it all, let me, I’m not Ben, I will never be BEN._

“No, Kylo,” Armitage whispers, the speech of a sorcerer made to taint his own rationality. “Let him go, pet. My glorious, _powerful_ Knight.”

Lips stained over with red press along the crook of Kylo’s shoulder, inch toward the hollow of his throat; Hux _bites,_ his teeth sinking deeper and tasting the blood beneath, moaning with more pleasure than he should ever be allowed. Ren pauses; the sound disappears as soon as it comes, and there he is, before him-- _Hux,_ hovering over Finn’s fallen form, stroking the edge of his cheek with a thumb lined in the rose-shade of affection.

“Ren… you know how I detest you breaking my things.”

“He is…”

 _“Mine,”_ Hux says, and he coaxes Finn’s head up, gazes into the swollen eyes of his servant and huffs, a true noise of discontent. “Do you hear me, Finn?”

A staggered breath; a hand fumbles to grip the collar of Armitage’s shift before the ginger presses it back to the boy’s own chest, displeased as he smiles once more. “Good boy,” he continues. “He shan’t be allowed again, dear.”

 _“You,”_ Kylo gasps, head fallen in shame, facing the dirt of the ground while hands curve the hem of his trousers, curling in rough material and gripping with the wild, exuberant pressure that could tear most anything. _“You_ are just like them,” he echoes. “I trusted you… trusted that you were like me, underneath all your gaudy ball-gowns and your stiff corsets. But you never have been… nothing more than a shamed _bitch,_ are you--”

 _“Enough,”_ Hux snaps, grasping Kylo by the side of his neck, surging upward until their lips are tightly locked, his disheveled figure accepting the madman’s roughness without care. “You dare accuse me, Ren? _Me?_ And to consider I found you _different._ You are more emotional than the rest of them-- than even your worthless _mother.”_ He hacks, deep in his throat, and he _spits,_ the saliva painting Kylo’s lips and the dip of his chin.

“I am _more_ than you are, Ren,” Armitage continues. “Because I use my _brain._ Did you honestly think I would choose him over you? No. He amuses me, that boy-- he is _mine_ to kill when the time comes, not yours. Heed it.”

The glinting blade flickers beneath the shadow of Hux’s body, reflecting light from the drawn blinds; it presses, like the cool sting of a spider’s venom, into Kylo’s throat, keeping him from swallowing as he instinctively feels a need to. He watches Hux, with all the disdain and irreverence he can possibly muster, callous and _angered_ when Hux reaches to wipe the spit off of his cheek with the little finger of his right hand.

Ren hates him, here; he hates how _beautiful_ Hux is, and yet how conniving, how devilishly _chaotic_ the man has proven himself to be.

 _“Black Widow,”_ he murmurs, and his spine comes alive with a flare of electricity.

Then, just as swiftly as before, Kylo lunges; his overlarge phalanges clasp over that pretty, pale throat, crossing over each other as he wrenches back, drags Hux along with him. His arm flies free, and Hux crumples back against the wall, fear in his eyes--Kylo has never seen the witch afraid, and Hux is _so magnificent--_ as the serial killer bears down on him with all his weight. A smack is delivered, right over the delicate curve of his cheek, and then again, with the back of an open palm. Hux cries out, _wails_ and falls to his knobby knees, a broken nymph, some fae-creature cornered in its own den that reaches for Kylo’s shoulder as though possessed.

“Ren, _stop--”_

_Crack!_

Hux’s face is a blend of abject horror and overwhelming confusion; his eyes are rimmed with red and purple, the vessels of one burst entirely. His hair is messy, pulled in every which-way by hands that were not his own, his plush lip split and oozing blood. His freckles seem mismatched, now, and his neck is ringed with the imprint of hands, right atop the skin shielding his trachea.

Kylo does not understand how he never noticed the imperfections before.

How is it, that in these layers of inadequacy and the marks of inner torment, Hux-- _his doll, his precious whore--_ is more ravishing than he has ever been? Kylo cannot tear his gaze away as he slackens, his brutalized body pitching toward the left… wavering with his eyes still on Kylo’s, a thin line of red dripping from his nose, over his lip, down to his chin.

And then he is falling. Falling, in a tangle of spindly limbs, falling with red painting every inch of his flesh and his hair trailing fire through the air, falling like a crumbling Roman statue set for decimation.

His head is over his feet, back arched in a curve akin to a hemisphere, those brilliant, jade orbs freely soaked under a layer of crystalline drops which line the copper lashes like decoration along a chandelier… tumbling, over and over, down and down and _down_ over dark wood steps, so many times that Kylo loses count.

Armitage Hux--the _megalomaniacal_ widow himself-- lies in a mangled heap at the bottom of the stairwell.

Kylo’s breath halts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hux IS NOT dead.  
> SEE THAT MCD TAG GETTING TAKEN OFF! I MANAGED TO WORK OUT AN ENDING WITHOUT KILLING ANYBODY.
> 
> sorry for that big cliffhanger tho ;)


	6. Epilogue

**_Comedy_ **

**_or_ **

**_Tr_** **_agedy?_ **

 

 

The seasons had hastened, passing into the frenzied haste of summer after a flurry of dreadful, callous days and the unmemorable events of the months after. When the sun first rose again, gleaming and golden in the sky as it danced above the landscape like a jesting statue, it set something new about the household that had once been Tarkin Manor. The damnedness dispersed, chased off by a radiant spark Finn had before considered little besides an empty fantasy.

Somehow, he felt rejuvenated. Rejuvenated, at least, in spirit, his shoulders heaving with the relief of a burdening pressure created by the constancy of fear. For a time, he thought it best to abandon worries of his own fate, secure in himself-- and in Poe’s arms-- away from prying words and the cunning edge of Armitage’s razor eyes.

Though Finn enjoyed his newfound freedom, he supposes that it is still not freedom enough-- it is not _enough_ to purge memories of past years, the scalding wounds seared across the inside of his eyelids. The terror which had gripped his bones as he watched in horror through the thin space of a cracked door as Ren _killed_ the only woman he had ever loved, as he later came into the manor, holding Armitage’s face between his scarred hands with knives still tucked in his belt and eyes darker than pitch, devoid of any humanity he had once been capable of showing.

Finn’s nightmare had caught up with him before he was ready to face it… and then, at once, it was taken away, and wasn’t that the great irony in it all? That it was _Kylo_ who had spared him his suffering after beginning it all those years before.

The night after Hux’s fall, Finn had stolen away to the garden, taken a moment to pause under the shade of a large magnolia, lined with spindly branches and dying leaves.

How funny, he thinks, that it was that magnolia tree which had been Armitage’s favorite.

Finn could feel his own heart thudding, just as he did now, and it spread out through every fiber, every nerve and muscle-- the grip of phantom hands around his throat, reaching deep inside his chest cavity to wrench away his heart, his breath rising and falling excessively as his impending fate seemed to approach with the black-clad figure in the distance.

The eventual denouement had been unexpected, just as the arrival of a particular guest that very night, beneath a withered tree.

Poe looked just as Finn remembered, as though he’d stepped right out from one of the young man’s most sentimental dreams; a rumpled shirt, waistcoat unsnapped (though the buttons would have been wrongly done regardless), haphazard and with hair wild, the soft, dark curls falling across his forehead, brown eyes warm with the love of a millenia. Poe’s grin was confident, though not haughty-- content in his own ability to remain human, scarred yet untouched, a true soldier ready to serve his people.

And by _God,_ Finn loved him.

Sitting beside Poe atop a staircase lined by stained-glass panels, his back against the nobleman’s pleasant chest, Finn feels loved. He thinks, perhaps, he has _always_ been loved, even as Poe left him behind, separated them for the purpose of _propriety._ But it doesn’t matter, now-- Finn knows why Poe did it, he _understands._ And any suffering he was made to go through for the relief of a solid figure against him, kind arms encircling his waist and a pair of chapped lips across his own, bathing in fragmented moonlight, was _worth it._

A small, silver glint catches from his finger. Finn allows Poe to interlace their grip, locking their fingers tight, protective and careful.

“If anything good came out of this chaos...” Poe traced the ring with his index finger, kissing Finn’s smooth forehead.

“Something had,” Finn answers, smiling. “ And long before. It was _you.”_

 

* * *

 

 

Even during childhood Kylo suffered through fits of restlessness; his mother would remark of dwelling, horrified cries and inhuman screams that echoed through the halls of House Organa, erupting every midhour in a fit of distress. Leia was as good a mother as she could be, then, and she would pull herself out from under the sheets of her warm bed, walk through the hollowed-out door adjoining her room with Ben’s nursery, turn the knob, pull it open and reach outward to help her crying child from his crib. She might rock Ben in her arms, or perhaps kiss his forehead, send him back to sleep with the promise of gentle dreams or visits to a far-off land, where she’d take him as soon as he was old enough.

Kylo Ren--or rather, Ben Solo-- remembers his mother’s stories to this day. He had at one point felt comforted by the smooth, aristocratic tone of her voice, harsh when necessary and yet brimming with empathy. He could recount each of her words in vivid detail, the warm, _safe_ feeling of seeing his mother’s face above his crib never having left his thoughts.

But then, of course, Leia’s presence never seemed the one worth remembered.

There was a figure, shadow-spirit draped in shrouded mist and outlined with the darkness of oblivion, always watching; it would place itself just out of Ben’s reach, whisper words of choleric kindness that Ben couldn’t make out. As he grew, the figure was there, staring out from the shield of the void, its eyes following each move he made, encompassing each breath he took.

Ben despised it most at night.

Nighttime, when everything was dim and the world appeared overcast by a surrealism he was incapable of understanding, was when he would _feel_ it; those eyes, an overwhelming presence, surrounding him everywhere he managed to look; his body fell still, stiffened automatically, freezing him in a place of submission, _paralyzed._ He’d watch the ceiling with wide eyes and quivering hands, breath cast out in the space around him when the world took on a ghastly chill.

Now, Kylo reasoned, the eyes were mocking him.

For here he lay, across a bed made of wood and metal, cobbled together by twisted, _mangled_ hands Armitage had never managed to fix, waiting for his redemption, his _sacrament_ to make up for all his ghastly, devilish action. Armitage’s fury had been so much greater than he’d expected, as he carried the soft little nymph himself down a beaten path, when he’d laid him to rest beside a fire and waited for him to wake.

Armitage was so beautiful, mangled and useless; Kylo supposes that he must be lovely as well, if his _husband_ wishes to keep him.

He’d married Armitage, not far after that day, before he managed to see the pretty creature for the hideous _thing_ he was beneath, his own demon far surpassing Ben’s… Hux’s passenger had taken so long to reveal itself, but yes, it _was_ worth it-! To hear his own brittle bones splintering as Hux rendered his flesh unwhole and broke him so he could _‘no longer pain me, my sweet beast,’_ was a strange, ethereal melody that should have sent even Kylo Ren away, screaming.

The town seemed much happier without the dark Knight of a murderer, without young women turning up missing their limbs or their head every few months; why should they care where he’d gone to? The deaths were no longer their problem… they weren’t anyone’s.

But Armitage did take such good care of him, even as he forced Kylo to please him in his ruined state, to kiss the high-arch of his lovely, sweet feet, to worship his blushing rear and drink the sweet nectar that came from his cock. And Kylo had been doing the same for _so long,_ far too long, forcing others to heel before him, to worship his status in lieu of finding more pain, being _killed._

So Armitage Hux was benevolent, in some ways. He never killed Kylo-- just took from him, and asked Kylo to take from him. He would read him stories as they lay together in that cramped cot, kiss the man’s broad shoulders and wrap him in tight arms, his days of corsets and skirts long forsaken in the gain of his official title. _Lord,_ Kylo thought… and perhaps, one day, _King._

Hux did so love it when people bent themselves backward for him, and Kylo was tied around his finger just like their wedding band.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to whoever is still around at this point for sticking through this fucking mess! Kate, I really hope you liked everything I did with this and what I spun out of a dumb idea that was just Hux being a black-veiled widower xD to anyone who stuck around, your comments mean the world to me and i'd love to know what you think! I suppose this is the longest actual plotted fic that I've ever written so... it's been fun.


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